


Whiter Fang

by DoubleDog



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alucard is morosexual, Awoocard, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Man’s Best Friend, Praise Kink, Sharing a Bed, Wolf!Alucard, praise related to being a Good Boy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 04:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleDog/pseuds/DoubleDog
Summary: Trevor finds an injured wolf in the woods. He can’t just... leave it.Or: The timeline in which Trevor and Sypha find an empty coffin under Gresit but wind up meeting Alucard anyway.





	1. Chapter 1

Trevor grunts, brings around his whip, and cleaves a demon in two with a tell-tale snap.

The whip forms a lose coil in his hands as he pauses. Takes it in.

From where he’s standing it would seem as if that was the last one. The demon’s halves steam on the snow, blackened from the inky blood surrounding the ambush.

The goddamn disappointment that was Gresit growing ever-distant behind his back, he had been making slow headway eastward. Trevor’s been traveling towards Braila for nearly a week.

Off the beaten path, of course. Alone, of course.

Traveling through the woods had its uses, largely the allowance to never have to talk to other people, but it also had its downsides. Such as: demon ambushes.

A couple of demons versus him and his whip. It hadn’t been a fair fight but what the hell else had he been expecting? Honorable, one-on-one duels? Trevor hasn’t seen that shit in _years_.

Trevor looks over the twisted bodies, three by his count, and staunches the urge to throw up. Not because he’s a fucking delicate flower or the like, but because the stench is so blindingly awful. Downright nauseating. That, and he’s winded. His breath is coming in ragged drags and he can feel the burn of a nasty scape he took on his left arm.

He’s damn lucky to have rolled fast enough to keep the blow from taking the whole arm off.

After a minute of silence, Trevor deems it quiet enough to bundle his whip. The body of the ambushers are unmoving black lumps, dead red eyes staring out, but Trevor doesn’t give enough of a shit to burn them.

So they’ll sit there, rotting away into the snow and then the ground or maybe, maybe they won’t rot at all. Maybe they’ll freeze into chunks of dark ice or become a tasty bite for the next big hellbeast that comes through. Trevor never sticks around long enough to find out.

He’s about to leave, gets a whole two steps away from the bodies when he hears it.

His hand goes to his belt, to his whip. He scans the forest around him before he hears it again.

A long, drawn out whine, same as the first time.

Trevor frowns and tries to pinpoint the noise. It had been faint, as if carried on the wind, but it sounded like… like a normal animal. Injured, perhaps, by the demons before Trevor had come along.

The moment passes; Trevor doesn’t hear a third whine. Likely whatever had made it finally kicked it. Such is life on this bitch of an earth.  

And yet... Trevor surprises himself by walking towards the sounds’ origin.

He must be some sort of masochist, wasting time like this. He’s not sure what he’s expecting to find aside from a dead animal. Probably not even an animal he can turn into dinner or, better yet, a warm hat.

The demon ambush took place in a clearing— now he’s headed into the deeper woods. The broad trees grow closer together as he trudges through the snow, the sunlight struggles to reach the ground through the denser canopy. Despite the hour the forest transforms into twilight, which would make the whole thing pretty spooky if Trevor didn’t currently live in Dracula’s pity party hellscape.

Farther along he gets confirmation he’s on mark because there’s blood in the snow. He doesn’t even stop to examine it as he continues onward, familiar as he is with the scene. The red droplets splatter the ground and lead around trees, lead around fallen logs and snowbanks.

They lead straight to a massive white lump that is nearly invisible in the snow.

It’s hard to tell what it is from this distance, but whatever it is, it’s absolutely massive. Closer on he can see the thick white coat is marred with a bloody gash… likely the wound that’s left the trail through the snow.

The lump doesn’t move. So, dead animal had been a good guess.

A glint catches his eye and Trevor walks closer. Yup, that’s a sword sticking out of the snow a few feet from the furry lump.

Upon further inspection it’s a very _fancy_ sword.

Trevor tests the heft of it in his hand and hums in appreciation. Yeah, that’s fine craftmanship. The blade is thin, polished, and balanced. In fact, the sword would be flawless except it’s way too long- like, an entire arms-length too long. It’s fucking absurd, is what it is. The fine hilt is decorated and inlayed with what looks like pearl. So, a very fancy, expensive, and frankly excessive sword, then.

Who the fuck would leave something like this? Trevor can’t imagine that it was used to kill the now-dead animal since the blade has remnants of black blood, not red. Definitely used on demons or the undead.

Trevor looks around for a human body, trying to figure out if someone could be buried in all this snow, when he sees them.

Two golden eyes peer out from white fur like twin lanterns in a blizzard. Staring directly at him.

Oh, fuck.

Trevor takes a step back while holding out his new fancy-ass sword some idiot left in the woods. The eyes follow his movement. Ah, so it’s _not_ dead. Very not dead.

But despite the revelation the beast doesn’t try to move from where its laying on its side. Just shifts its eyes, slowly drifting towards the sword he’s holding out. It blinks. Huh. At this point Trevor can see the big black nose and the line of its snout and the flattened ears.

That’s… that’s a wolf. A huge fucking wolf. Bigger than any wolf has any right to be.

The wolf lets out a whine, long and pitiful just like the previous ones.

Something in Trevor’s chest clenches at the sound.

No. Uh uh, no, not today. He tears his eyes away from the animal and takes another step back.

When he makes to turn around and walk away, the wolf makes another noise.

It sounds… sad. Pitiful. Wounded.

Ugh.

Uuuuuuuughhhhhhhh.

“Ugh, fuck you,” Trevor says spitefully as he points at the wolf with the stupidly long sword, “Don’t try and win me over.”

The wolf slowly blinks its huge eyes before whining again.

His heart tightens fast and hard in his chest.

Oh no, he’s fucked.

“A compelling argument,” Trevor grumbles, strapping on the sword and stepping closer. The wolf simply watches as he gets on one knee to inspect the wound; there’s a huge slash across its torso and one if its legs doesn’t look quite right. It looks pretty nasty, but it’s impossible to know exactly how nasty just by looking.

Trevor presses gently near the wound which gets him a low growl, but when he looks over at its head it stops.

The wound doesn’t spill much blood, possibly due to the freezing temperature, and there doesn’t seem to be any guts spilling out. The front leg seems to be broken or fractured or something- who’s to say? The wolf could probably survive from the injuries if the woods weren’t fucking cold as hell and swarming with Dracula’s army. As things are now? It’s just future carrion.

There’s a moment of hesitation where he’s staring down at the wolf, where he actually considers what the fuck he’s doing.

The moment passes. He retrieves the last of his bandages from his pack.

It won’t hold in the long run, but it will keep it from bleeding out until he has the time to deal with everything. He starts wrapping the wound even though he knows fuck-all about how to treat an animal and the wolf just… lets him. It watches him through the whole process— doesn’t even try and snap his hands off.

Overall, it’s surprisingly docile for being almost 200 pounds of wild killer instinct.

Once he finishes the gash he turns to the leg. Trevor knows what he’d do for himself; he’d make a splint until he had time and alcohol to reset the bone on his own. Can he do the same thing for a wolf?

Yeah, why not. He finds a stick straight enough for his liking and brings it close to the fucked-up leg. The wolf decides that now’s the time to get upset and starts growling at him.

“Don’t be such a baby. Or uh, puppy. Be a— a grown-ass wolf, like a man.”

That works in shocking the wolf into silence for a moment. The growling starts again, but much quieter.

Trevor tries to be careful binding the splint to the leg with his remaining bandaging but the wolf is a fucking princess over it and does in fact try to take a bite out of him. It’s bad enough that Trevor ends up smacking its giant snout with the splint stick, which should have ended up with him getting his face ripped off. Instead it startles the wolf into letting him finish splinting the leg somewhat decently.

Trevor looks proudly upon his handiwork before waving a hand over it. “Hope you, ah, like my work. Because I don’t know much about wolves but… I think I did a damn good job.”

The wolf looks back at him, seemingly dazed. Probably awestruck with gratitude.

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” 

Even with Trevor’s magnificent effort in patching things up, it doesn’t look like the wolf is going to walk around or that it can even get up. His suspicion is confirmed when the wolf tries to rise and punches out a pained cry.

“Alright,” Trevor decides aloud, to himself, to the wolf, “Alright, but you’re not gonna like this.”

And then he gets his arms under the wolf and hoists it up, up, up and over himself until the big furry weight is situated over his shoulders, one set of legs over each side.

“Fucking hell you are _heavy_.”

The wolf growls as if insulted. Trevor jostles his shoulders a little.

“If I’m gonna carry your gigantic, ungrateful furry ass through the woods you— you’re gonna have to shut up.”

The wolf huffs a hot breath but does indeed quiet. Actually, it stays quiet for the entirety of the torturous walk out of the demon-infested area, and yet it can’t seem to help itself from drooling all over Trevor’s right arm.

Awesome.   

Trevor makes the grand decision of taking them both back towards the road in an effort to avoid future demon attacks. He can handle his own, obviously, but he’s not sure how he’d also protect a giant bundle of useless fur. He tells the giant bundle of useless fur this information, and he also tells it how much he loathes going back to the roads.

Demons? Manageable. Ungrateful village folk? Sad families with forgone homesteads? No, no thank you. 

But alas, traveling folk are less likely to try to kill him than the demons. Just, less likely. The people of Gresit enjoyed challenging that likelihood, as devout people of faith are currently wont to do, which made helping them a fun exercise in self-destructive altruism.

It takes almost half an hour to get close to the main road with the enormous weight of the wolf on his back. He eventually finds a small cave, barely large enough for him to stand in, and sets the animal down as carefully as he can. Within the hour he has a fire going near the mouth of the cave, gets a bedroll set up, and finishes skinning a skinny rabbit he caught early in the day. By now the sun is setting, sinking low and making the sky musty orange.

Once he’s cooked the rabbit staked on a stick over the fire, Trevor turns his attention to his new… friend.

The wolf is watching him, as usual. Trevor notices that the golden eyes have gotten a little droopy, a little sleepy, and the animal has its large head on the ground.

Trevor crouches between it and the fire, really gets a good look at the thing. As massive as its head is, its not nearly as big as he originally thought. More fur than anything, he’d have to guess. Still, way too big for a dog and above average for a wolf. But…

“You’re a friendly fella, huh,” Trevor thinks out loud. He takes a strip of the rabbit meat and puts it on the ground in front of the wolf. The golden eyes watch him for a moment, look at the meat, then look back at him.

“Oh, what?” Trevor interrogates suspiciously, “You too good for campfire rabbit? Or do you think I’m a shit cook?”

The wolf stares back at him, blinks once, then noses the meat. Once the rabbit meat is fully smelled to oblivion, the wolf guzzles it down with a show of sharp, white teeth.

Trevor whistles. That is— that is a big mouth. A lot of dangerous teeth in there. Maybe he should reconsider…

…Nah. He hasn’t gotten this far by being a coward.

He offers up another strip of meat except this time he holds it out in his hand. Maybe it’s colossally stupid but Trevor has a hunch and he’s far too impatient not to test it immediately.

“If you bite my hand off, this whole budding friendship of ours is over.”

The wolf doesn’t move at first. After a long stretch of seconds, to Trevor’s absolute wonder, it raises its giant head and carefully, delicately, takes the food from his hand. Doesn’t so much as scratch him.

It’s literally eating out of the palm of his hands.

“I knew it,” Trevor says in confirmation, eyes narrowed. The beast stares at him as it finishes the scrap. Trevor points a finger at it, though he’s still careful not to put his finger too close to be threatening.

“You’re not a wolf. You’re too- you’re too well behaved. Tame.” The not-wolf yellow eyes are suddenly big, comically wide— as if it can understand that it’s been caught in the lie. Trevor has heard rumors of these things, has never seen one in person. Now that it’s sitting in front of him it’s all too obvious.

“You’re one of those wolfdogs.” Big enough to fight off bears, docile enough to be around humans. Trevor had thought the notion to be too ridiculous to be true. But in all his years traveling, he’s never seen a wolf behave like this, and he’s never seen a wolf that looked, well, that looked quite like this one.

The wolfdog in question tilts its head. Trevor takes it as a sign.

He slowly moves his hand to the creature’s closed snout, palm up, empty of any food. The wolfdog sniffs his hand with a loud wuff. Then, it tentatively bumps its cold wet nose into his palm.

Trevor feels… something.

He feels sort of stunned, feels sort of grossly touched by the whole thing. He feels… ugh.

Well, in for a penny…

“You should growl if you’re thinking of biting my hand off,” Trevor advises aloud and tries to emit a sense of calm as he shifts his hand away from its snout and towards its head. Him and the wolfdog watch each other as Trevor reaches out, waits to get a growl or a snarl, and finally touches the top of its head when he doesn’t get one.

The top layer of its coat is a little stiff, bristly, not at all what he was expecting. As he moves his hand back towards its neck the fur feels a bit like horse hair in its coarseness. The fur tickles his hand as he passes it through the dense thick of it. Starting to feel confident, Trevor drifts his fingers to the space behind the large, erect ears.

“Holy shit.” The fur there is soft, incredibly fucking soft, it’s probably the softest thing he’s ever felt in his entire life. Trevor shares this information with the wolfdog as he does an experimental dig with his fingers.

He sees the long, busheled tail thump once, twice against the snow.

“I knew it,” he repeats, only this time he has a small smile on his face that he’s having problems keeping off. “I fucking knew it.”

He is so, so fucking smart.

Any other idiot in the woods would’ve thought this was a wolf. Well, Trevor Belmont knows a good deal about the non-human things out there in the world, and this here is just a big, lost dog.

Definitely a dog.

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Trevor ends up spending the rest of his evening trying not to get bitten to death as he stitches up the wolfdog’s shoddily bandaged gash.

Despite his efforts he still gets a bite on his arm that’s too shallow to draw blood but deep enough to bruise, which— which he doesn’t _deserve_. He’s saving this thing’s life and getting shit for it. Well, fuck the dog. It’s not like he’s keeping it.

The wolfdog will get better, eventually, and then fuck off to wherever it came from. It probably has an owner or something. Probably belongs to whoever owned that dumb fucking sword. Until then Trevor will be provider of ear scratches and medicinal care. Maybe the wolfdog will catch him a squirrel in return. Maybe he’s just a special sort of moron for taking care of someone else’s dog.

They sleep through the night, the wolfdog and him. Trevor in a wool blanket, wolfdog in its thick-ass winter coat. He’s pretty sure the wolfdog has the better deal.

In the morning Trevor fixes the dog a new, better leg splint and checks the stiches. There’s no sign of corruption and it’s holding together just fine. The wolfdog gets snappy whenever Trevor spends too much time around the wounded areas so he doesn’t get a good look at the leg.

“Is your leg even broken?” Trevor mutters. He gets a low growl for trying to touch it again. Figures. He could have sworn it looked much more fucked up when he found it in the snow; the leg is looking far better now than he would have expected.  

Trevor decides to stay another day at his little makeshift cave camp for purely logical reasons. He has things to do. Important things. He can stand to delay his traveling by a day.

It has nothing to do with how the wolfdog doesn’t seem to be walking any time soon or that it keeps staring at him with those huge, golden eyes.

He cleans his weapons. All of them. Then he sharpens the blades, one by one, methodically and proficiently until he’s satisfied. The fancy sword is in good shape and miraculously doesn’t need anything aside from a quick clean. It’s strangely frustrating how well kept it is, considering it got abandoned blade-down in a snowdrift.

Trevor doesn’t sing while he works but he does… complain. With the wolfdog as his entrapped audience he complains about how much he hates walking in the snow, how he hates the unrelenting cold, how he hates that he gave Sypha his good winter coat out of some sense of brotherhood he’d thought was long behind him, how the coat he then had left with him was woefully shit in comparison.

He laments on how he misses beds, real beds, even the shitty hay pallets some inns tried to pass off as beds. He misses ale, pretty much all ale, even the shitty river swill some taverns tried to pass off as ale. He misses his brothers and sisters.

He doesn’t expand on the last bit because he doesn’t. Hadn’t. Won’t. Not even to his silent companion.

Instead he spends extra time detailing the last instance he had had good drink, a real _good_ drink, because it feels like it has been _years_. Fuck, maybe it has been.

With the cleaning and sharpening done, it leaves one last chore on his agenda.

Trevor shoulders his bow and arrows, gathers all the necessary supplies. As he gets up to leave the dog whines— awake enough to worry about Trevor leaving, apparently.

“I’m gonna get us some food,” Trevor explains to an animal, like an idiot. He’s yet to meet a dog, or wolf, or any animal that can understand him. But his rations are for one Trevor-sized person and he’s not sure how long it will be until the animal can hunt for itself. The wolfdog stares at him unblinkingly, then tries to get up before collapsing on the ground again.

“No you—you stay put.” He points at the dog and ignores the growl that it’s started up. “Stay.” Does it know commands?

“Staaaaay,” Trevor draws out, taking a few steps back. The wolfdog doesn’t follow, so Trevor counts it for a success.

Maybe it knows other words? Whatever, he’ll have time to try things out when he gets back.

Later, when Trevor has caught some game and gathered some wood, enough to constitute as ‘not bad for an army of one’, he returns to his little camp to find the wolfdog exactly where he left it. Its eyes are closed, the mass of it unmoving. It’s only when Trevor gets close enough to drop his bounty by the burnt-out fire that he considers exactly _how_ unmoving it looks.

He swears and he’s over at its side in an instant. His knees are smarting from how hard he hits the ground but it hardly matters, hardly registers as he buries his hands into the chest fur to feel for the rise and fall of its breathing, a heartbeat, anything.

He feels all the soft fur between his fingers, but no heartbeat. No telltale rise-fall of the chest.

Fuck.

Trevor feels something in his stomach churn. He ignores the way his throat starts to close up. He’s a fucking expert at being detached. This isn’t any different than all the burned-out villages, the small corpses, the half-eaten horses. It’s not different.

What a waste of time, he thinks. He carried a fuck ton of dog ass in the snow and for what?

His hands are shaking. He wills them to stop by closing them into fists, tight in the dense coat of another one of his endless fuck-ups.

The wolfdog moves its head and rolls over so abruptly that Trevor falls on his ass in shock.

It stares at him before breaking out in a yawn, long rows of white teeth flashing as it does so. Once again, the wolfdog proves itself not-dead despite all signs to the contrary.

“Fucking… you sleep like the dead,” he hisses. Trevor’s hands are still shaking. In true Belmont fashion his dread curdles to anger in a split second.

“What the hell wrong with you?” What the hell is wrong with _him_? He should leave it here. If he takes it with him on his miserable mission to kill Dracula it’ll get killed along the way for sure. You don’t bring pets on suicide missions. He’s already fucked up enough by letting Sypha come along.

Oh sure, she had assured him they would find a “savior” under Gresit and together the three of them were _destined_ to take down the strongest vampire of all time. But they didn’t find a savior under Gresit, they didn’t find anyone, so of course they were still going to try to do the impossible anyway. What would Sypha think if he shows up with a big dog? What, ‘oh hey, Sypha, is this the savior you were looking for?’ Yeah, right.

The wolfdog blinks, then starts licking one of Trevor’s hands like some sort of weird primal apology. Its breath is hot on his freezing hands and Trevor feels as though he is watching himself from a distance, letting some wild wolfdog lick his hand. He is so fucking _weak_.

“I brought food,” Trevor says faintly, still sitting on his ass.

The wolfdog gives a quiet wuff, which Trevor takes as a thank-you, and that’s that. Trevor shows off his masterful bounty of goods, the wolfdog does fuck-all, and they both settle in for another cold night.

It’s a good thing he had a successful hunt, since they get snowed in for nearly two days straight.

A storm, fast in its approach but long in its assault, traps them in the tiny cave. If Trevor hadn’t gotten more food they would have starved. And if the wolfdog wasn’t around to curl in against him, Trevor would have frozen to death.

The first day Trevor curses his luck and grunts his grievances and keeps a good distance between him and the wolfdog, who does a whole lot of sleeping. By the second day Trevor is freezing, his shitty wool blanket providing only minimal comfort. At one point he unintentionally falls asleep after curling up into a shivering ball. When he wakes, he finds that the wolfdog has settled against him. Trevor marvels at the new warmth shielding him from the seeping cold and cautiously puts a hand into the fur in front of him.

Wow, fuck, the coat on this thing is way denser than he had imagined. He has his hands sunk in and still doesn’t feel the bottom. The undercoat is soft, too, far different than the coarse outer layer he’d been dealing with.

Trevor adds his other hand in the fur for good measure. It’s like warming his hands in front of a fire, except the fire is a dog and capable of biting his hands clean off.

The warmth of it makes him sleepy but the danger of it makes him distinctly not-sleepy. Who the fuck is dumb enough to sleep next to an unfamiliar wolfdog they found deep in the woods?

Trevor, that’s who.

Something is going to take him out of this shitty world eventually, and if it’s a big fluffy dog then it’s not such a bad way to go. And so he sleeps, and he sleeps well enough all things considered.

Trevor wakes up on the third day, sky clear and snow piled high outside, to a mouthful of fur.

Ah, one of the many downsides of partnership. At least the beast can’t judge him.

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

Trevor discovers he is wrong.

Turns out, the dog _can_ judge him, and it judges him a great deal more than anyone else.


	2. Chapter 2

Thing is, Trevor has always wanted a dog.

When Trevor was a child, he had gotten into his head that a dog was the ideal best friend for a boy who didn’t have many friends. He heard a number of stories describing them as loyal creatures who would protect their masters from the direst of threats. He had also heard that the bond between a boy and his dog was something akin to sacred in nature. To Trevor, all dogs were small chivalrous knights who happened to also be very entertaining to look at. He had spent many afternoons in his favorite tree imagining a courageous hound at his side— almost as often as he imagined being a courageous man at the side of his father. 

The summer Trevor was ten, their neighbors’ sheepdog had puppies. The Greysons were the closest family to the Belmont estate, far closer than the village below, and he often saw the family’s sheepdogs run in the rolling fields where they put their sheep to pasture.

Bedelia, the youngest Greyson daughter, had brought him to their barn and shown him the litter. Nearly a dozen puppies had stumbled about in the hay with their inquisitive eyes and clumsy legs while the dam watched over them. The farm horse and dairy cows lumbered in the background, completely obsolete to Trevor as he crouched in front of the puppies who insisted on his attention.

Bedelia knelt next to him. “What do you think?”

One of the whelps was chewing on his hand with sharp little teeth while another played with his untied bootlace. Some of them were sleeping together, fat bellies rising slowly in pile of fluff that was otherwise indistinguishable as multiple creatures.

“They’re so floppy,” he remarked while watching the extra skin bunch up as Bedelia rubbed one’s back. Trevor chewed on his lip. He was hesitant to reach out and instead kept his hands in his lap. His family had horses and he was accustomed to their care, but horses were infinitely bigger and stronger animals. The puppies in front of him appeared alarmingly fragile with their pink noses and soft padded feet.

His father did not teach him how to handle fragile things. His father spent a lot of time teaching him rather the opposite. Trevor’s skill deficit struck him then, quick as his mother’s temper, and left him feeling just as stung from the might of it.

“Trevor.” Bedelia looked at him keenly with her dark eyes. She held her skinny arms out in front of herself, raised casually around air.

“Put your arms like this,” she instructed as imperiously as being an eleven-year-old girl allowed.

Trevor copied her, partially because he wanted Bedelia to like him and partially because he was accustomed to being told what to do. Bedelia, seemingly pleased with his compliance, scooped up one of the puppies and placed it in his arms with a gentleness Trevor envied.

“Um,” Trevor protested belatedly, unsure of how he agreed to this. The dog in his arms squirmed rambunctiously. After a moment it settled, apparently satisfied with the manner in which Trevor’s arms supported its rump and oversized paws. It was a tricolored pup and its mixed fur was duck-down soft in his hands. It was also lighter than he had expected.

A cold wet nose nudged his neck and it made a few small, quiet yips before huffing hot breath into his hair. Trevor had two fears: one of squeezing it too hard, and one of not holding tight enough and dropping it. That left him little room for error, so he was extremely cautious in using one of his hands to pet the top of its fuzzy head.

With his wiry arms around the pup, Trevor felt something take root in his body, like spilt still-warm tea soaking through a tablecloth.

Lately, it seemed as though his father was only concerned with how best to turn Trevor into a soldier. And yet, the protection of innocents was just as much a bloodright as monster slaying; at least, that’s what his brother always said. Trevor knew this, even if it had fallen wayside to weapon training and the studying of monsters.

This, this thing in Trevor’s arms, it counted as innocent too. It felt like a good first step, protecting a dog. He could work up to bigger things like people later.

Bedelia startled him out of his thoughts with a cough.

“So, do you want to keep him?”

“What?” Trevor squeaked, nearly dropping the whelp. He stared at Bedelia’s serious expression with a sense of wonder that was usually reserved for blackberry tarts or especially graphic illustrations.

“We’ve had more than we expected. And it’s a lot of mouths to feed. I’m sure my parents won’t mind it.”

“I—I don’t know, I don’t, I’ve never had one before—”

“Come on, Trevor,” she said with a roll of her eyes, “It’s a puppy, not an infant. Besides, he likes you.” The small dog was indeed snuggling up against Trevor’s warm chest, its heartbeat faint and fast against his own.

“How can you tell?” Trevor asked softly.

“I just can,” Bedelia said with the authority of someone who had experience with these things, and who was Trevor to argue against experience?

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

When Trevor had brought the puppy back to the estate, the first person he came across was his father.

He had just returned from a hunt as evident by the bedraggled pelt draped across his father’s horse. As his father dismounted, Trevor saw the vacant red eyes that belonged to the pelt staring out at him. Dead as they had been, they still possessed an unholy sheen to them— glossy as glass. He stifled the urge to look away from it, knowing full well his father would berate him for the cowardice.

“Ho, what’s this?” His father’s face was ever hard to read. His voice, however, was familiar; deep and rough in the way a woodaxe felt in the hand.

“A puppy,” Trevor blurted out. He realized the redundancy only after he had said it. His father grunted dismissively, striding from his horse and trophy as the stableman led them away. Trevor had earlier placed the puppy on the ground to romp but quickly scooped it up so that he might follow after his father’s long steps.

“The Greysons gave him to me.”

“How kind of them,” his father said without looking at him, “Knowing that, I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“Understand what?”

“That you must return it to their farm.”

“What?!” Trevor exclaimed before he could think better of it. The pup wriggled in his arms and so he jostled it to a better position. “But you—I thought—”

“You thought what?”

“He—I could train him!” Trevor rushed eagerly. His father would never let him waste time on a such as thing as a household pet, so Trevor had invented a plan. “I’ve seen the Krusts use their hounds for hunting. He could help us, you know, later on. Dogs use their noses and stuff.”

Trevor knew it was the wrong thing to say when his father stopped. His bearded face was set towards the manor while his broad back stretched tall as a mountain to Trevor.

“Help us?” his father said quietly, the warmth that inhabited his voice during meals wholly absent. Trevor anxiously waited for him to say more until the silence stretched on beyond a simple pause.

“Yes,” Trevor insisted, saying it with a resolve that swallowed his hesitations. His father turned to him then with a sigh. He wore the lines of disappointment on features, an expression as intimately familiar to Trevor as the bestiary illustrations he obsessed over in the hold.

“What do the Greysons’ hounds do, Trevor?”

“They protect the sheep from harm,” Trevor said quickly, having gone over this argument in his head many times. The walk between the Greysons’ farm and the Belmont Estate was a long one.

“From harm?”

“From wolves and other wild beasts.”

“And what manner of beasts do we hunt, Trevor?” His father’s words were not harsh or even said in anger, and yet Trevor felt the blow of them all the same. He saw the future he had crafted that afternoon slipping away like it was made of snow, like it had always been made of snow, and Trevor had been foolish enough to labor over something that would melt in the sun. Trevor didn’t answer, hating the way his eyes burned no matter how hard he willed the feeling away. 

His father took a knee so as to be close enough to meet his eyes at level.

“Son,” his father started in his ever-familiar lecturing tone, “We Belmonts do not hunt wolves. We do not hunt bears. We do not hunt boar. We hunt...?”

“—the night itself,” Trevor finished scratchily, as was expected of him.

“Exactly, Trevor. We have a job, a duty, and though it is largely thankless it is ours and ours alone. This fellow here,” and his father gave the small dog an easy pet between his ears, “Isn’t like us. No amount of training could make him what we are. Everything has a design. Vampires will drink blood, the Church folk will pray, sheepdogs will herd sheep, and Belmonts will hunt...?”

“—the night itself,” Trevor repeated, more begrudgingly than he had the first time.

“Yes. And how do you think this fellow would fare against a vampire, or even a gargoyle or specter?”

“But he’ll have me,” he protested in a quiet voice. He jutted his chin up as he waited for his father to deny it, or to tell Trevor that he wasn’t ready; that he wasn’t enough on his own.

His father did no such thing and instead, much to Trevor’s surprise, he nodded in agreement. “This is true. But the truth is larger than that. There will be times you cannot be there, or will not be there in time. What will happen when you aren’t there at his side? It only takes once.”

“So how do you do it?”

“Me?” His father’s dark eyebrows drew into a wrinkled furrow. Trevor swiped an arm across his face, his fears buoyed close to the surface like air trapped under ice. He focused on regaining the stern, grown-up expression he had practiced. He was so focused that he nearly missed how his father’s hard-lined mouth had softened.

“If we cannot save someone it may feel like failure,” his father said, “but if we do not try, we have already failed. Part of protecting people is knowing that you cannot protect everyone, all of the time.” He paused before continuing with a deep fondness Trevor yearned to hear and yet heard less often, “It’s why you must not place him in danger, just as I, you.”

The choice that was given to Trevor was in truth not a choice at all, but he stood and mulled it over as if it was one. It was easier to agree when his father was looking upon him with a certain warmth that only appeared at Trevor’s success with a whip.

“Okay.”

“That’s a good lad.” His father gave a small smile and clapped him on the shoulder before rising to his feet. Trevor tried not to sway under the impact. Once back to his usual towering height, his father struck a pose Trevor was as accustomed to imitating as he was to seeing it. It looked like this:

With his back straight and both arms crossed over his chest, he untucked one hand to gesture it forward, palm up.  

Trevor knew this meant his father was about to present him with wisdom that had either taken generations of Belmont quests to attain or that his father had come up with on the spot. It didn’t matter much to Trevor whichever was the origin. He liked to stash away the adages as they came, like small coins that would someday become a treasure if only in number.  

“Remember, son,” his father said seriously, hand forward, palm up. He stretched out a pause and spoke slowly, clearly for the drama of it. “If you can keep someone out of trouble, then you’ll save yourself the trouble of saving them later.”

Trevor’s eyes went wide. “Yes, father.” His father was very smart. And very good with words. Trevor was not, but he had decided he would be very good with words when he grew up.

His father dropped his expressive hand to his side with a grunt of approval. It was a dismissal, and Trevor knew it for what it was. He also knew that he had already pushed enough— any more would likely tip the balance into something sour.

So Trevor watched his father walk away towards the manor and swallowed his final protest. It caught thick as blood in the back of his throat, heavy and unspoken.

“But I’ve already named him,” Trevor confessed quietly, if only to unstick it from himself.   

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

On the third morning of being trapped in a tiny cave, Trevor gets sick of calling his companion ‘Wolfdog’ and ‘Hey You’.

Actually, a number of ‘Big Boy’ renditions get thrown into the ring after Trevor witnesses the wolfdog taking a piss. During the snowstorm there wasn’t anywhere to relieve themselves out of sight of each other, which, what? It shouldn’t matter, it’s a _dog_.      

Well, it would seem Trevor found the only dog in Wallachia with a sense of discretion.

Trevor watches the wolfdog pee, okay, because he’s curious. He feels weird about calling it ‘it’. Even then, his previous attempt to get a look at the— the bits— had resulted in the dog snarling at him for what felt like an hour. So, when the dog goes over to what Trevor had mentally dubbed the Piss Corner, Trevor watches.

“Man wolf dog.” Trevor announces each word distinctly before chuckling at his own joke. The wolfdog does not find it funny and, strangely enough, will not meet Trevor’s gaze. His big ears are angled back awkwardly. As if he’s _embarrassed_. Did more intelligent animals have a form of... modesty?

No, definitely not. They were naked all the time, unless you counted the fur, and if you did count the fur, then that would mean...

Trevor falls asleep because thinking about it makes his head swim.

The next day is the same as the first, except the wolfdog gets promoted to Fluffy Boy (for the warm cuddling) and demoted to Bastard (for the ungodly shedding).  

On the third morning, Trevor is sick of the cave and running out of things to call his temporary buddy. His gratitude for the sun peering through the melting snow wall is immense since he needs to get the fuck out. He hasn’t stretched his legs in hours. In days. In forever.  

They both emerge from the makeshift bunker into a white expanse. The snow is deep around his legs and covers everything in a thick, undisturbed sheet that glitters like opal. Adding to the peaceful scene is a wash of clear sunlight which makes the whole thing blindingly, blindingly bright.

“Fucking... fresh hell.” Trevor shades his eyes with a hand. Squinting at the transformed landscape, his poor stupid eyes eventually adjust enough for him to watch as the wolfdog wanders from the cave to stand out and away from Trevor. He’s still got a limp and there’s old blood crusting the large bandage— but the days of rest have done him good.

So good in fact that Trevor fully expects him to limp away. Just, limp off into the distance as they each go their separate ways.

He’s as free of the cave as Trevor and no longer on death’s doorstep. The big guy will probably head back to his owner using whatever uncanny sense of direction God gave to wild creatures, and Trevor will head towards a town using the shitty map given to him by Sypha.

Trevor opens his mouth to say goodbye before realizing he doesn’t do goodbyes, especially not to dogs who can’t speak human. That would be moronic. He instead does the mature, well-adjusted thing by swerving on his heels to walk away without so much as a word.

A minute into his trudging stomp through the snow Trevor feels like tearing out his hair because he can’t stop thinking about the fucking dog.

He glances over his shoulder, then, and nearly jumps out of his skin; his hand shoots to one of his knives on instinct.

“Christ! You— I almost took a crack at you. Shit!”

The wolfdog stares at him. He doesn’t have the decency to look even a little apologetic. If anything, he looks awfully pleased with himself for scaring the shit out of Trevor. That thing is silent on the snow, limp and all. It’s incredible.

Trevor doesn’t say this, though. Eyes narrowing, he cocks his head to the side.

“You planning on sticking with me, boy?”

Those golden eyes keep staring back at him. Not even a blink. The staring contest endures until the wolfdog breaks it with a small, tentative wag of his enormous tail.

“It’s fine, I guess. If you want to come along.” Trevor looks away and the brash part of himself breaks the surface of his façade. A faint smile tugs at his lips. “I’ll protect you.”

At the very least, he can try.

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

“Frosty, hey, come here boy.”

The dog does not come. He doesn’t so much as look at Trevor from where he’s standing by an old pine tree, staring longingly after the raccoon that had scampered up its branches.

“Hey, uh, Blizzard. Get back here.”

No response to that one, either. Trevor strokes his chin and muses, “How about... Ah—no no, Al—”

The wolfdog snaps his attention to Trevor, quick as a whip.  

“...Alphonse,” he finishes slowly.    

Although previously interested, the wolfdog blinks and angles his head away, the rejection as clear as if it had been said aloud.

“What? Don’t like people names? Not even... Beniamin?”

The wolfdog briefly glances at Trevor before walking even further away from him. Wow.

“Alright then, Shitbitch,” Trevor mutters. The wolfdog gives him a look of such distain that it actually gets Trevor to roll his eyes. At a dog.

Now that the wolfdog is still around and— from the look of things— not running off anytime soon, Trevor had become hell bent on naming him. The task had originally seemed easy, maybe even a chance for some boy-and-his-dog bonding, but. Well.

This dog, this fucking wolfdog, he doesn’t like Trevor’s names.

He doesn’t like _any_ of Trevor’s names, even the good ones. And Trevor knows that he doesn’t like the names because he makes damn sure Trevor knows.

The first name Trevor had called him was White Fang, which hey, he thinks it’s a great name for a dog. It’s majestic and shit. It took him a long time to come up with it, too, all so that the wolfdog could snort and hobble away like Trevor had offered him garbage.

He hadn’t been deterred by what had transformed into a challenge. So far there had been: Frostbite, Brandy, Crystal Dagger, Cloudtail, Ghost Hunter, Lightning, and finally, Howard.

The wolfdog hadn’t taken to any of them, much to Trevor’s dismay. It’s as if the wolfdog is determined to remain a nameless thing, drifting along without anything tangible for Trevor to grasp. Intangible...

With the wolfdog now back at his side, he casually peeks over at him. “Moon-mist?”

Trevor yelps at the answering nip at his ankle.

“Damn—Fuckin’—Okay, Princess! D’you like ‘Princess’? Because that’s what you fucking are.”

Ah, yes, the wolfdog raises his snout to the air, snootily. Mocking him with half-lidded eyes. Unbelievable. Trevor wants to trade for a better, less dickish dog.

The biting puts an end to Trevor’s naming fun for the rest of the day in fear for his delicate ankles. The headway they do make is sluggish in the snow and only somewhat due to the dog’s remaining limp. They walk in companionable silence, a silence that Trevor starts to understand as very different than the silence he keeps on his own. It feels different, at least. It feels... nice.

He begins setting up camp as the sun sets—not in a cave, thank you— and throws the wolfdog some of the food he’d acquired over the day. It had been a group effort; the wolfdog, chasing shit up trees and Trevor, shooting said shit out of trees.

Sitting around the fire, Trevor settles in to clean off the knives he had used. His companion is laying down a few feet away, his massive head resting on equally massive forepaws while his breath stirs the snow in front of him.

Even with the splint, even with the bandaging, the wolfdog looks ever the regal creature. When he sits like this, like a house pet on a hearth, he appears all the more feral. Untamed— like nothing in him could be touched or moved by man.

There’s a stillness to him that speaks of violence rendered. It should be a threat to Trevor, but all it does is arouse a sense of kinship. Trevor can’t exactly say why. Maybe it’s because he’s always being called an animal. Maybe, being excommunicated, he’s already closer to being one.  

It makes Trevor feel foolish about trying to name him. Who is he, anyway, to name something else? Perhaps the dog already has a name, one that Trevor will never know, or perhaps he doesn’t want one at all. Shit.

“I’m not very good at this,” Trevor admits, albeit gruffly. He scratches the back of his head and looks over. The wolfdog is gazing at him with his characteristic half-lidded eyes as the firelight flints against them, and from the shadows of his face the irises reflectively glint with the luster of gilded coins.

The memory unspools from him, unbidden and swift, of his mother’s dowry— how it had been kept in the manor, not the hold, and how it had looked all melted together, after.  

“Aurum,” he mouths to himself. The word spills from him unprompted, surprising him in how smoothly it slots into the air around them.

He’s likewise surprised by the sudden weight added to his lap. Head heavy on Trevor's thigh, the wolfdog allows him to rub the space behind his ears. He certainly does say a lot, for a dog.

“Aurum,” Trevor repeats, and grins when no bites land in judgement upon on his leg. It’s a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trevor knows his real name. It stands in his mind, a shadow on steel; a man shaped like a coffin.  
> He faces towards the beast and calls him what he is.  
> "Awoocard." 
> 
> ———————  
> EDIT: For all of you who didn’t major in classics, ‘aurum’ is latin for ‘gold’.   
> ———————  
> I am endlessly grateful to my beta, Danny, who saves you all from reading my mistakes. I am also grateful to my best friend, Morgan, for demanding I write this story in the first place.  
> And thank you, readers, for your kudos, comments and compliments! Each and every one had me opening up my computer to write more, even when I had 'finished' for the day. I am a very slow writer, so thank you for your patience as well.


	3. Chapter 3

Thing is, Trevor doesn’t know shit about dogs.

He thought he did. He grew up with horses. Shit, he was practically born on one. Dogs and the like are just... smaller creatures. Besides, even a well-led horse could get in a temper and kick a man’s eye out of his head. How hard could training a dog be for a practiced, assertive man such as himself?

It’s hard. It’s really, really hard.

“Aurum, fetch!”

The wolfdog watches as Trevor chucks a hefty stick over his head. He watches the stick’s trajectory impassively, sharp eyes trained on it, and doesn’t move. Doesn’t move so much an inch. Bastard.

Aurum stares at the stick a moment longer before turning to Trevor in that slow way of his that Trevor now understands as entirely deliberate. Nothing about the wolfdog is slow. He is either perfectly still or explosively quick— anything in-between is specifically meant to piss Trevor off.

“You’re supposed to get it. The stick.” Trevor points at it for good measure. “It’s fetch.” 

The dog looks at the stick again, then back to Trevor. He snorts and manages to look indignant about Trevor’s attempt to do a completely normal, everyday thing.

“Don’t fucking ‘wuff’ at me, buddy. You should be good at this. It’s natural instinct or whatever.”

Aurum stares at him, completely unreadable. Trevor can’t tell if he’s being challenged. Is he being challenged? Does he need to— to dominate him or something? How does he do that? Does that alpha male shit apply here? 

Trevor skeptically eyes Aurum. “I’m the alpha.”

Aurum doesn’t react. Perhaps more clarification is needed. “I’m, uh... alpha-ing you. You’re being alpha’d, buddy.”

The wolfdog huffs and grins, his red tongue lolling out of his mouth. It’s like he’s laughing at him. 

“Sit,” Trevor tries in his most commanding tone, hands on his hips and back uncomfortably straight. Aurum stares at him some more, then amazingly, begins to sit. It’s the slowest sit in all of fucking Wallachia but it’s _sitting_.

Almost. Almost sitting. The wolfdog halts the sit process with his butt hovering mere centimeters from the ground. 

“No, sit. Siiiiiiiit. Furry ass on the ground, boy.”

Aurum looks away from him, butt still hovering. Fine. Trevor leans over and pushes the dog’s butt the rest of the way himself. Standing back, he evaluates the full sit. It’s close enough, probably. Something oddly pride-shaped lodges itself into his chest. 

“Good boy! Good sit,” Trevor praises the wolfdog. Aurum’s ears perk up a little at that. It’s cute.

“Aurum, down.” The wolfdog blinks, then stands up because he’s a punk-ass bitch.

Trevor runs a few more trials and discovers that for all that Aurum is clever he is equally disobedient. He knows sit, stay, and lay down but goes about performing them with varying degrees of compliance. “Roll over” is an utter failure. “Fetch” results not only in failure but also in Trevor chasing after the stick himself. The few commands Aurum does know are inconsistently followed, like they depend on Aurum’s fanciful wolfy-whims.

Trevor knows that this is what they call ‘bad behavior’.

He’s not even surprised, really. Aurum is one of those rare creatures that manages to be just as stubborn as Trevor himself. No, he’s not surprised. Instead, he has a suspicion. 

He tests his suspicion later in the day when they’ve stopped for Trevor to take a quick break. Sitting on a rotting log, Trevor holds his hand out to Aurum.   

“Aurum, shake.” The wolfdog glowers at Trevor’s offered palm in open contempt.

Trevor scrubs his other hand over his face and sighs. “Aurum, shake my hand... please.”

Aurum daintily places one of his huge-ass paws in Trevor’s awaiting hand with the kind of poise used by proper ladies at exquisite balls.  

“Oh,” Trevor groans, shaking the paw as expected, “Oh, you righteous bastard. I can’t believe this. You want me to _ask nicely_?”

The white paw drops from Trevor’s hand to his knee with an answering wuff.

“Ugh, you’re such a prat.” He rubs the soft fur behind Aurum’s ear. “Who raised you to be a gentleman, hm?”

The wolfdog’s golden eyes slide over to his and shine with flattery.

“Don’t look so pleased with yourself. You’re a dog, not a lord.” Trevor pauses in his petting, frowning, “Aristocratic manners won’t win you anything out here.” Not these days. They were the first holdover he shed once he was on his own. As it turns out, you don’t quite notice the weight of those things until you dropped them.

“We need to get moving,” Trevor grumbles, but waits a few minutes longer. Aurum has settled his head on his knee and Trevor idly runs his hand over the shape of it, thinking about what kind of person trains their dog to be polite.

Mmm, some posh idiot, probably. A sadist, maybe. ‘Please and thank you’ his ass. Training or no, Trevor doesn’t like the idea of a dog being more civilized than him.

Thankfully, it only takes another day for Trevor to reassure himself that he has slightly better manners than a dog.

The day starts normal. Starts good, even. The splint comes off in the late morning. Trevor settles down to change the bandaging and finds that everything about them look... well it’s hard to say what they look like. The torso wound seems closed but the area is obscured, covered, absolutely matted with old blood.

He tries to wash some of the gunk off with melted snow but Aurum is having none of it. Nearly takes his fingers off with those sharp set of teeth, the ungrateful git. He bandages it back up with a clean wrap anyway, thinking he’ll try cleaning it again when the wolfdog is too tired to care. The splint comes off entirely because the leg looks fine. Like it was never in a bad way to begin with.

It’s baffling. Trevor’s too grateful to really question it, and besides, it’s not like he actually knows anything about wolfdog anatomy. Maybe something about their cross-breeding lends itself to faster healing. That’d be crazy, right?

Fast recovery aside, the wolfdog still has a small limp. It’s like a hiccup in his otherwise graceful tread, and there’s something close to frustration in the way Aurum holds himself. But he’s quicker, now; doesn’t need Trevor to slow down to keep pace.

They start making good time. They’re sticking close to the road where the snow is more melted and it’s easier to trek along without sinking into a bank.

Braila is a while off still, but according to Sypha’s map there’s a small town up ahead. At the pace they’re at they’ll make it by nightfall. If the village is miraculously untouched, then Trevor can have a drink, sleep on a tavern bench, maybe find some stores for him and Aurum to split during the rest of the trip. If the village was visited by hellspawn... well. Well. Maybe the drink will be free and maybe there’ll be a bed some poor farmhand didn’t spill his guts on.

Trevor’s looking down at his map, feeling distinctly thirsty, when he hears the sound of a horse.

He snaps up and sees the two travelers the same moment they see him. Shit on a stick.

It’s two men, one on horseback and one on foot, coming from the direction he’s heading. The horse looks shitty, the men look worse. Trevor knows that he looks like shit himself— he hasn’t shaved in ages, hasn’t taken a bath in longer, and he’s wearing a second coat made out of shed wolfdog hair and congealed demon gore. But he’s ruggedly handsome at least; he’s been told as much. These fellas, in Trevor’s gracious opinion, are ugly on top of looking like shit.

No, he does not want to talk to these people if he can help it. He’s not gonna walk any closer to the road than he already is, he’s not gonna trade bad news, he’s not gonna give some strangers the chance to judge him.

Trevor raises a hand to give a half-assed wave. The man on foot raises a hand and the man on the horse raises a goddamn bow. 

“Oh come on,” Trevor complains as the bowman knocks an arrow. “Really? I haven’t even—”

He’s ready for the arrow to come at him, he already has his short sword out in his hand. What he isn’t expecting is for the arrow to go wide around him and thunk harmlessly in the snow behind him.

Right where Aurum was just standing.

Fuck. Oh fuck.

“Fuck,” Trevor says, with feeling. He starts running, pulling his legs through the snow like it’s nothing, like his legs aren’t already burning from days of walking. But the wolfdog is shooting ahead of him in a white streak, fast as the arrow that came his way. 

He’s beautiful, Trevor thinks, watching in a curdling mix of awe and horror as Aurum leaps into the air. His huge body forms a graceful line that ends in an arrowhead of teeth, and Trevor has a moment to admire it before Aurum barrels into the archer.

The wolfdog knocks the man clear off his rearing horse. It’s instantaneous. One moment he’s there and the next he’s not. Both strangers are yelling... well, screaming. The horse has decided to get the fuck out of there and it bolts, leaving Trevor plenty of room to see Aurum’s hulking figure standing on top of the guy who’s moved on from screaming to full-on blubbering.

The other man, still in the screaming phase, is approaching Aurum with a big stick over his head. It would be funny if Trevor didn’t think the stick was big enough to knock his brain loose from his skull. It’s still a little funny, though.

Trevor catches up just before the man gets a swing at Aurum. “Whoa!” he shouts as he inserts himself between the stick and the dog, arms raised in front of him, “Whoa now, no need to be hasty—”

“It’s gonna eat ‘im!” The man doesn’t lower the stick. His eyes are bugged out and dart between Trevor and the dogpile on the ground. “God almighty, it’s—it’s killed George!”

“I doubt it,” Trevor says gruffly, as evident by the sniveling behind him. He takes a step back, arms still outstretched, and looks at Aurum. The wolfdog is standing with his front paws pressing down on the man’s chest. A row of white hair is raised in a stiff peak along the dog’s scruff and back. Despite the man’s larger size, not only is he unable to get Aurum to budge off him but it also would seem that he’s having a hard time breathing.

“Off, boy,” Trevor orders. Aurum ignores him and leans his head down, his snarling maw brought to be even closer to George’s face. The poor guy starts crying harder.

“Jesus Christ, Aurum, get off the fucker for Christ’s sake!” He shoves at the wolfdog which doesn’t so much as budge him. Nevertheless, it does get Aurum to look at Trevor. His lips are still pulled back into a dreadful snarl.

Would Trevor like to let Aurum rip this man’s throat out? Sure. It’d be easier, certainly.

But should he? Then Trevor would have to also fight the idiot with the stick. He doesn’t _love_ the idea of murdering normal people traveling on the road. Feels distinctly un-heroic. 

“Please get off,” Trevor grouses. Aurum keeps growling but finally steps off the guy, thank fucking God. Trevor turns to talk to Stick Man just as the man starts swinging down at Aurum with his dumbass log of a tree branch. 

Trevor reacts immediately with a swear. He’s fast enough to catch the stick on its stroke downwards and jerk it out of the stranger’s hands where it goes spinning into the snow out of sight. The splinters he gets for his trouble have enough bite to make him wince. Fuck, those are going to hurt coming out later.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” the now-stickless man shouts, and he sounds like he wouldn’t have cared if his swing had taken out Trevor instead of the dog. Rude. Even though Trevor’s hand itches to go to his weapons he restrains himself and gestures around them.  

“Me? Me, huh? What the hell is wrong with _you_?”

The man stares at him blankly.

Trevor scowls, places a hand on Aurum’s head next to him. “Your friend fucking attacked my dog.”

“Your dog?” the man repeats in shock. He looks between Trevor and the dog again. “That’s... your dog?”

“Yeah, your ears broken or something?”

“Are your _eyes_ broken? That’s not a—a fucking dog!” The stranger points at Aurum who starts growling again. “That’s a wolf, dipshit!”

Okay, now that gets Trevor slipping into anger territory. He puts a hand on his sword’s hilt and draws himself up to his full height. “He’s a wolfdog. Dog. As in, what kind of bastard goes around shooting at other people’s dogs?”

The guy seems to understand his disadvantage, what with his stick gone and Trevor standing in front of him armed to the teeth. “Uh, well, we uh—”

“How’re we s‘pose to know that’s a dog?” the other man chimes in from the ground. He’s sitting up with his eyes locked on Aurum, “It doesn’t look anything like a dog!”

Aside from a few tears in his clothes and the piss-stain on his trousers, the guy, George, looks fine. There’s also a good amount of dog drool mucking up his beard and shirt but Trevor hardly counts that as harm done. Better than a shredded jugular.

“We thought you were being stalked by the beast, see.” The man in front of Trevor looks more sheepish than mad. “Thought we were doing you a favor.”

“Yeah,” George adds from the ground, nodding hastily. “Yeah, you should, uh, put a collar on it or something.”

“Hm,” Trevor grunts. He doesn’t say anything else, and the three men all stare at each other in silence. Aurum is also staring, but that’s just what he does.

“Are you...” George gets up from the ground, looking nervous. “Are you sure that’s a dog?”

“M’hmm. Yup,” Trevor says with confidence. He pats the wolfdog’s head. “Aurum, sit.”

Aurum slowly sits into a miraculous full-on sit. He still looks angry, absolutely pissed-off, and the sitting doesn’t lessen the murderous intent swimming in his golden eyes. Cool.

Trevor gestures outwards and impulsively says, “Aurum, go fetch.”

Aurum stares at him. He stares back. He tries to communicate with his eyes the way that Aurum does, but he’s pretty sure he just looks like he’s going to shit himself.

He’s about to repeat the command, or better yet, try a different trick that has actually worked in the past, when Aurum stands up. The wolfdog then turns around, tellingly slow, and starts... walking away. He pads over a ways off to the bow half-buried in the snow. He sniffs it.

To Trevor’s complete amazement, he picks it up in his mouth. They all watch expectantly as Aurum carries it back over to the group. The wolfdog stops a short distance in front of them.

Amazing. Truly amazing. This beautiful, terrifying dog won’t fetch a dumb stick but he’ll grab a man’s bow? Now that? That’s standards.

“Good boy,” Trevor starts, feeling rightly smug, “Now drop—”

 Aurum snaps the bow into pieces between his massive jaws with a resounding crunch.

“Uh.” This is not good. “Uh, bad. Bad dog.”

Aurum gives the bow another crunch before dropping the pieces, his half-lidded eyes shining with unrestrained amusement. Trevor is— he’s— it’s impossibly funny. His dog is such an asshole.

The archer gives a little gasp and his friend gives him a consoling pat on the shoulder. Well, they _did_ try to shoot him; tit for tat and all that.

Aurum walks over to Trevor, who in turn gives the two men a shrug. “We’re working on it.”

The wolfdog thumps his tail on the ground a few times while looking enormously pleased. The smaller man looks like he’s got something to say, but before he can argue with Trevor his good pal George slaps him across the back.

“Yeah, yeah mate we can see that,” George says with too much enthusiasm, “Great dog.”

 Aurum growls. Both men take a step back. Cowards.

“Your horse seems to have, uh, abandoned you.” Trevor glances around and yeah, there’s no sign of that thing. He turns a palm up to the strangers, “You know, if you want some help—”

“We’re good!” Stick Man says quickly.

Trevor grins, “If you say so. Best of luck with that.”

The two men back away slowly, nodding and making excuses as they put some distance between themselves and Trevor. Eventually they turn around and start calling for their horse, if you can even call that sad thing a horse, and Trevor is left alone with his wolfdog.

He turns to Aurum. “Boy, you’re a real git, huh.”

The bushy white tail does a few wags. Shortly after, Aurum seals the deal with a wet-nosed bump. How can he be mad when Aurum is off being a defensive powerhouse with a bad attitude and a cute face? 

“Idiots,” Trevor grumbles as he watches the men bumble around in the distance, “Can’t even tell a dog from an actual threat.”

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

The village is destroyed.

Destroyed is the nicest word for it. Decimated is more accurate. One side of the place is practically leveled; the only evidence that it used to be buildings are the splitters of house frames sticking out of the sooty ground. The other half of the town is more or less intact which consists of some ragged houses and small, small businesses.

Aurum sticks close to his side as they move through the remains, seeming on edge with his luminous eyes sweeping the scene like twin lighthouses. Trevor doesn’t feel the same sense of danger. Why should he? There’s no one left from the look of things, and demons don’t waste time on empty towns. They pass a few mangled corpses, a few people pieces that aren’t so recognizable when they’re not attached. It’s not nearly as many as Trevor would expect from a village of this size. It’s within reason to assume half the village cleared out, maybe more, before the hoard reached them.

Trevor eyes what used to be a man halfway out of a doorway. There’s a pitchfork still gripped in his withered hands and no head on his shoulders. So, some townspeople risked the roads and woods while others thought to fight. Seeing as there’s no one around to greet them, Trevor would say the fighting didn’t turn out so well. Surprise surprise.

He spends the hour before dark looting. The people he leaves be, only stepping over them when he has to, as he goes through the damaged buildings. He grabs a thing or two out of the town’s dinky smithery and a scant amount of preserved food from the houses.

Aurum doesn’t follow him inside. Each time Trevor passes through the doorway or steps through a caved-in wall, the wolfdog waits just outside of the structure, watching. At first Trevor assumes it’s out of fear or—or a kind of watchdog sensibility. But when he comes out of a partially collapsed house with a thick moth-eaten blanket, he recognizes the dirty look Aurum is giving him.    

“It’s fine if you want to go ahead and judge me,” Trevor remarks with an eye-roll, “Just don’t get all huffy when you’re cold and I’m not.” He cocks his head to the side towards the top half of an old lady decaying out in the yard. “Besides, _she’s_ not going to be using it any time soon.”

He marches himself to the village tavern with his ‘ill-gotten’ loot, noting that the sign says “Goat’s Gruff” in peeling paint. There’s even a mounted goat head hanging over the bar.

Trevor eyes the hairy head with suspicion. “What is it with countryside peasants and goats?”

He tosses his pack to hang over the shitty trophy and gets to work. A good bit later and he’s reclining in a pile of blankets with a bottle of wine. He’s the king of—of goat... shit, uh, mountain. The tavern is trashed and most of the goods are missing but it has all four walls, a roof, and no dead bodies. That makes it damn luxurious real estate.

The chair fire in the tavern fireplace makes the room illuminated and warm. Yeah, chair fire. He stacked a couple of broken wooden chairs together because it’s all just wood, and it’s not green or damp like the wood he’s been dealing with outside.

Between the fire, the blankets, and the wine, Trevor is cozy. Toasty, even. By the time Aurum decides to dignify him with his presence, Trevor has downed an entire bottle and is deep into a second. The world is pleasantly fuzzy.

He offers the remainder of the wine to his companion who delicately sniffs the rim and declines it with a wrinkled snout. Of course.

“Suit yourself,” Trevor says cheerfully, taking another swig. Eugh, it’s puckeringly sour and tastes like ass. He makes a face. “You’re right, it’s shit. But to waste it would be... wasteful.”

Aurum huffs and surveys the room. He doesn’t seem impressed by Trevor’s chair fire or blanket mountain. Then again, he rarely seems impressed by anything.

It reminds him of an idea he had earlier. Rummaging haphazardly through his blankets, Trevor searches for his very good, very smart idea. It draws attention from the wolfdog, who pauses in his assessment of the tavern to instead watch Trevor with mild curiosity.

Eventually, Trevor finds the item and brings it out with a triumphant grin. “Ha!”

Aurum takes one look at what’s in his hand and snorts dismissively.

It’s a collar. Well, it’s almost a collar. It’s a belt.

It’s a belt Trevor found in the wrecked smithery that was likely made for a child going by the size of it. The slim black leather is pressed with a geometric folk pattern common to this region, and the craftsmanship of the little diamond shapes makes Trevor think the maker was at least a somewhat competent cordwainer. The buckle is simple copper but well made.

Trevor’s seen fancier belts worn by priests, though any decoration is baffling to him. Belts were for two things; holding pants up and pretending they were whips. Now they served a third purpose: dog collars.

Aurum is not interested. Trevor knows it probably has nothing to do with how the design isn’t up to Aurum’s standards. But. He had also known it would be a hard sell.  

He rolls himself forward so that he’s sitting up, “Look, I don’t have a, uh, problem with you being all... wolfy. It’s incredible. Incredibly majestic. But the people out there aren’t... they aren’t forgiving.” Trevor stares at the makeshift collar, feels his mind get slippery on it. “Wallachia is a shithole,” he grunts to his bottle, “They hate, destroy anything they don’t understand and—and they don’t understand half of what the fuck is happening. Hell, I don’t even understand half of what’s happening. What I’m doing. I feel like I have to be what my parents would have wanted, but I...” 

Trevor’s brain stalls, gets stuck like it always does when it came to his family. It was an uprooted nail that snagged the threads of his thoughts. And if he tugged at it, pulled away too fast, it would unravel in an unpredictable way. Fuck. It’s enough to force Trevor to finish the rest of the wine.

“The burden of it it’s... it’s fucking bullshit, you know? It’s like... I can’t fucking leave them be, can’t—can’t let them all get gobbled up by monsters even when they’re yelling, ‘eat me, eat me!’” His voice twists mockingly at the end as he flops his hands around. “They don’t deserve it, really,” he admits, “They’re just... stupid and bad at fighting. So bad at fighting, Christ.” It’s going to make him depressed just thinking about all the shoddy pitchforks.

He looks into the bottle, frowns at the dry bottom. Maybe he can find another bottle if... wait. Wait. Can Aurum sniff out libations?

“Boy, wine!” Trevor slurs and holds out his empty bottle. Aurum looks at the bottle. Aurum does nothing.

“No no, wine! _Wine_. Er, go fetch more wine.” Trevor gestures with the empty bottle again. It must work because the wolfdog ever-so-gently takes the bottle from Trevor into his mouth. Success!

Aurum steps away and drops the bottle to ground with a clank. Then he sits. Un-fucking-believable.

“Traitor,” Trevor moans, “You—you’re supposed to be my... my best friend! Betrayed in the end... by man’s best friend.” He opens his palm to the ceiling dramatically with a hiccup. “Truly, all of Wallachia is lost.”

The traitor comes over and steps into Trevor’s blanket mound. Trevor squints at him from his drunken slant before flapping open the bundle in a truce, which Aurum takes the time to consider before tucking into his side. Seeing as the wolfdog is as big, if not bigger, than himself, the blankets get sort of... thrown over him.

As Trevor opens his mouth to continue complaining, the wolfdog pushes out a drawn-out sigh and stretches himself halfway across Trevor’s lap. He smells like dog. He also happens to be heavy, and warm, and very, very fluffy.

It’s definitely going to put his legs to sleep. Hm. That’s a problem for tomorrow’s Trevor.

“You going to let me put this on?” he asks as he brings the collar out again. “It just tells other folk that you’re not, uh, a wild animal. That you’re mine. It’ll keep you out of trouble, and if we can keep you out of trouble...” Shit. How did it go?

“...Then, it’ll keep us from the work of... fuck, of cleaning up your mess later.” Mmm no, that’s not it.   

Lucky for Trevor, Aurum is a dog, so he doesn’t give a shit what he’s saying. The wolfdog grunts and barely cracks his eyes open, which is basically an enthusiastic yes as far as Trevor’s concerned.

It only takes two, okay, five attempts to get the thing on. His hands aren’t as nimble or skilled as they could be and the angle is terrible. Aurum doesn’t help at all and his big head weighs a fuck ton. Once he successfully gets the collar notched, Trevor slouches further into the blankets and buries his hands in the soft fur in front of him. “I’ll get you a, uh, nicer one later. Covered in jewels and gold and shit, since you’re such a fucking princess.” Did they make collars like that? Sounds exactly like the nonsense rich bastards wasted money on.  

Maybe Trevor could get one with the Belmont family crest on it, once this was all over and it wasn’t the same as pinning a target to your chest.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, thank you for your incredible support! I love that you love what I love, which is by and large general buffoonery. I hope you enjoy your monthly update as much as Alucard enjoys being a big prissy meanie.  
> And to clarify, no, Alucard does not know who Trevor is (specifically, a Belmont). That's called Drama, my friends, and hoo boy are we gonna have some of that in the future.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alucard get out of the way there’s a demon coming. oh my god he has airpods in. he can’t hear us. oh my god.

“No biting,” Trevor lectures, one hand flipping about in the air, “Don’t bite people. One, because you’re better than that, and another, it’s gross. Good dogs don’t bite random people. It makes you look bad. But, more importantly, it makes me look bad.”

Aurum growls and shows Trevor a sliver of white, white teeth.

“See? That. That—you gotta keep those in there.”

The dog widens his mouth, cracks his smile into something grotesque.

“I’m serious!” Trevor laughs and lazily bumps Aurum’s snout with his hand. The wolfdog immediately clicks his jaw shut. “Biting? Bad. It’s always bad.” Trevor annunciates ‘bad’ each time, hoping to convey some level of disapproval.

On the road earlier that morning, they had passed some countrymen who first solicited Trevor for food and coin, then said some unfriendly things once they realized they wouldn’t get any from him. It wasn’t anything unusual for Trevor, hell, he’d been in their position numerous times. This specific occasion however, the travelers had made a comment about Aurum, something about buggering, something about bitches, blah blah blah.

Trevor hadn’t been listening, so he had almost missed Aurum biting one of the guys in the ass.

At the time? It was hilarious. The guys had squealed like a stuck pig, the small group scampering away as quick as their feet could carry them. Aurum was all narrowed eyes and contemptuous stares, pretending the whole thing hadn’t happened.

Even now, Trevor has a hunch that Aurum isn’t taking him seriously. “You can’t just bite people because they’re rude.”

Aurum gives Trevor a confident look that says that yes, he can.

“If you bit every asshole you’d met, you’d have to sink your teeth into half of Wallachia.”

Aurum considers this, then carefully puts his mouth over Trevor’s arm, entirely without force or pressure.

“You calling me an asshole?”

The dog removes his mouth and wuffs cheekily.

“Shitbitch,” Trevor says, mostly with fondness. He looks out over the farmland as they walk.

The farms are largely abandoned. It must have been recent, going by the still well-kept state the fields are in. With these many farms, these many crops, it would make sense that they were not far from Braila. A city that big would require acres upon acres of local food to supply its population. With each field they pass, they get closer to their goal. Closer to Sypha.  

“Now, if we’re talking about extremely rude people... yeah, maybe. If someone was attacking me, per se, you can go wild. Also,” Trevor pauses, scrunching up his face, “Priests. God, I don’t like them, can’t stand them, couldn’t care less about them.”

He points at his dog. “You see a priest? Free chew toy.”

Aurum tilts his head, his gold eyes inquisitive.

“If the Church actually did half of what they claimed to do to help, or if they focused more on exorcising monsters rather than its own people, they’d have more of my respect.”

The wolfdog snorts dismissively.

“Yes, I do have respect for some things! Deep, deep down. Way deep down.” Trevor rubs at his stubble. “But as it stands right now? The only thing worse than a troop of fucking self-righteous priests is a bunch of vampires.”

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

The final stretch of road to Braila is not as empty as Trevor had expected. Or hoped, really.

It’s dusk. The color of everything has been slowly leeched away along with the sun’s desertion, but there’s enough fading light left to see dark shapes coming out from the forest tree line.

The movement is... ragged. Unsettling. The sight immediately puts Trevor on edge, holding him in place even though the shapes aren’t moving in his direction. Aurum stills next to him, gold eyes intent on the shadowy figures. They had been traveling somewhat close to the road and yet still close to the brush to avoid being out in the open. It’s one of the many reasons Trevor hates traveling via road in the first place; it’s a tactical nightmare.

Today though, today is his lucky day. The group of Dracula’s demons haven’t noticed them and keep lumbering farther and farther away. After a moment Trevor begins to relax.

That’s when the screaming starts.

To Trevor it’s a siren call. His feet are already moving, picking up speed, carrying him towards the shipwrecking rocks of a treacherous fight. This time, Aurum stays at his side rather than racing ahead. Together they speed directly towards the screams, which grow louder and louder with each passing step. Most of the snow has been replaced with ice and melting slush. It makes him uneasy, knowing their ability to run quicker is at the risk of hitting a patch of neck-breaking ice.

As they approach the scene Trevor’s stomach drops.

It’s a caravan of people. There’s two dozen, maybe more, and they look like average farmers and village folk going by the clothes and carts. He’d wager they’re the refugees from the abandoned town, slowed in their escape to Braila by their livestock and elderly. They would’ve been in the walls of Braila by now, had they abandoned their weak and ill. The thought does little except leave a bitter taste in Trevor’s mouth.

Some of the demons are ravaging into a horse or, ugh, what might have once been a horse. Or a cow. The other half are laying into the people as evident by the abruptly cut-off screams and gurgling sounds. Trevor counts the hellspawn. Six. Six on one, or six on two, if he counts the wolfdog. Not the best odds. Hell if he cares.

“Hey, ugly!” Trevor enters the fight spectacularly by chucking his idiotically long sword like a javelin at a scrawny bat-like demon that had been within snatching distance of a young girl. The sword spears the demon through its gut and keeps going. The sword hits a wagon with a thunk, sticking into the wood and trapping the large ugly bat in place. Like a screeching nightmarish meat skewer.    

The second demon, a larger and more humanoid figure, turns from the burbling man it has its claws in just in time to get a face full of angry wolfdog. The thing is big. But so is Aurum.

In an instant the creature is knocked to the ground with Aurum latched onto the juncture between the demon’s shoulder and neck. Trevor spares the struggle another glance in time to see the wolfdog tear off a chunk, get sprayed with black ichor, and go back in snarling for more.

It’s savage and disgusting. Really horribly gross. Trevor is so smothered in pride, he could sing.  

The bat demon is still tugging at the sword in its belly, its unnatural hands scrabbling over the hilt slick with dark blood. Trevor approaches cockily and takes a firm hold of the hilt.

“Need some help?” He pulls the sword out of the wagon, then continues slicing upwards with the same momentum. The demon parts midway without resistance. Damn, but that sword is as sharp as it is long. Which is to say, far too much. Trevor isn’t sure how to use it except as an over-decorated spear. He moves on to a third demon who is making a committed beeline towards Aurum.

“Look here, you great nasty lug,” Trevor taunts in the same moment that he throws the fancy sword. This time it misses, but he immediately follows it up with two daggers. The demon turns at the last second and takes the daggers in its shoulder without so much as a grunt.

Fine by him. The point hadn’t been to cause damage. It had been to distract.

Aurum sweeps the creature’s legs out from under it like a furry battering ram. It gives Trevor the leverage he needs to leap on top, brace himself on the demon’s chest, and decapitate it with one downward swing of his silver short sword. As he retrieves his daggers from the meat of the dead demon’s shoulder, he catches Aurum’s eyes.

The wolfdog’s maw and chest are covered with ichor— a wild butcher’s apron. His golden eyes are bright and shining with excitement. They share a look. Trevor, well, he doesn’t think of himself as a team player, but the two of them work well together. It reminds him of how he and Sypha took charge of Greshit’s defense, what with her magic and his experience. The collaboration feels intrinsic. Natural.

Trevor grins. Aurum grins back.

Three down. That leaves Trevor and Aurum with the other three demons, who have since abandoned partying on the horse corpse in favor of lumbering towards them.

Trevor reaches under his coat and takes his whip in hand.

Vampire Killer curls in his palm as familiar as a lover. The last remaining piece of his family legacy aside from his own drunkard ass and a pile of ashes. The one thing he never sold off, never traded for a drink or a warm place to stay the night. Sometimes, Trevor would swear he could feel the energy worked into the leather, the consecrated blessing that makes it invaluable. But he doesn’t have a lick of magic in him—so all he feels when he lashes it out is the tell-tale snap of the whip meeting its mark.

The skin of the demon starts to bubble where Vampire Killer’s attack lands. A few seconds later and the whole thing is bubbling, expanding, bulging monstrously as it burns from the inside out. A few seconds more and it explodes.   

The last two demons seem to catch onto the fact that Trevor is more than a man with a pitchfork. They’re able to dodge Trevor’s strikes once, twice. The third time catches one in the leg— which is all it takes for the consecration to do its work. The last demon comes rushing at Trevor through the flames but he’s already spinning, whipping Vampire Killer around in a deadly swift snap. 

There’s something truly satisfying about fighting with a whip. More satisfying than swordplay or target practice. He tries to use his other options when he can, in the pursuit of keeping the skills sharp, but his whip is still the sharpest tool he has.

“Should’ve left more to you, huh.” Trevor turns, then, to Aurum.

The wolfdog is staring at Trevor, completely motionless. Wait, no. He’s not staring at Trevor—he’s staring at Trevor’s hands as he coils his whip between them. When he places it back on his belt, Aurum’s gold eyes follow.

Trevor steps closer, grin fading. “What—”  

Aurum takes a step back. 

Trevor hesitates. The villagers are slowly reemerging from their hiding spots, returning from the random directions they took when they fled from the slaughter. They watch, but no one ventures closer.

“It’s still me, buddy,” Trevor says slowly as he placatingly raises his hands. He tries taking another step forward only to have Aurum back away again.   

What. The fuck. His heart is still racing from the fight and the sound of it rises strong in his ears. “What, is it... this?” Trevor asks, slowly, while putting a hand back on his whip.

The wolfdog starts growling. Ah. That, then. As Trevor takes the whip off his belt, the growling grows louder. Understanding unfurls in his chest. He knows what fear looks like on animals, in people. He knows what it means when a horse shies from the crop, when a child flinches from the raised hand of a parent. When a dog growls at the sight of a whip. 

He drops Vampire Killer on the ground.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Trevor promises, making a show of stepping away from the weapon.

To his shock, Aurum doesn’t stop. His growling only grows deeper. His ears are flattened against his head, lips drawn back, tail midline and tense. The picture of animalistic animosity. And he’s staring directly at Trevor.

It stops Trevor dead in his tracks. It doesn’t make any sense. He doesn’t understand, he can’t think—can’t see past the new look in Aurum’s eyes. Like he’s more of a stranger than the day he found him in the woods.

The weeping and chattering of the crowd beyond could be nonexistent for all Trevor is concerned. And yet, the frantic shouts of the young girl from earlier catches his attention. She’s waving erratically, eyes wide and fearful, and Trevor can’t hear what she’s saying. But he can see where she’s pointing.

Unlike the other civilians, she’s not pointing at the menacing wolfdog. She’s pointing at something else.

Oh, fuck.

He fucked up— he miscounted.

There’s a seventh demon.

It’s charging towards Aurum in an eerie vacuum of sound. The wolfdog isn’t looking, he’s too busy staring at Trevor like an angry fucking _moron_. 

“Move!” Trevor roars, and a few things happen at once.

Trevor lunges for Aurum like his life depends on it. Aurum lunges for Trevor like he’s going to rip his throat out. The demon lunges for the two of them like it’s going to rip _both_ their throats out. The villagers scream, because of course they do.

At the last second Aurum seems to realize that either he doesn’t want to kill Trevor or that they’re in danger, because he doesn’t go for Trevor’s jugular. Instead, he swivels toward the incoming monster, too slow, for once not quick enough to get out of the way in time.

Trevor gets to Aurum first. Ha! He crashes into the dog, has a split second to bask in his own glory, and then has an ungodly foul, stinky demon slam into his body.

The demon roars as it lifts Trevor from the ground with one arm, forcing both of them to cut through the air until Trevor’s back hits something hard. A tree? The ground? It’s hard to tell. He’s too busy trying to catch the breath that was forced out of him on impact. The cool part is he hadn’t heard or felt anything snap, but that doesn’t mean much because everything hurts like hell. 

The demon puts more weight on him and something _does_ snap.

Trevor screams. Or, he would, but there’s no air in his lungs to scream with, so what he does is push out a pathetic little wheeze. The demon laughs one of those dumb ominously deep laughs. Trevor doesn’t think it’s that funny.

His vision is swimming, dimming, blurring dangerously at the edges. He feels like he’s going to throw up. Well, that might be from the undead stench more than the asphyxiation. The demon doesn’t budge, no matter how hard he pushes or how hard he struggles.

“Try try try, little human.” The demon grins, mouth wide and sharp. “But we are an army, and you are just a man.”

“Close,” Trevor rasps, “Not... just... a man...”

“Oh?” The amused demon lets up on him a tad, gives him enough air to continue.

“I’m... a goddamn _Belmont_.”

Trevor tries pushing again, only this time he uses a sword.

The silver blade sinks into the demon with a sizzling hiss. Room for air? No no, that’s room for sword, thank you. It’s a bad angle and Trevor doesn’t have the force behind it like he normally would, but it’s enough incentive to get the demon off of him.

Trevor gulps in air, then tucks in and rolls to the side. Nails scrape into the ground where he was moments before. He tries to stand, get his feet under him. His legs aren’t listening to him. Shit.

He has a good view from the ground of the demon rearing back, black blood oozing from its charred flesh, when a crazed dog claws his way onto its leathery back.

Aurum sets into the demon like a wolf possessed.

There’s a lot of snarling, a lot of wet sounds. Trevor tries to watch, he really does, but it’s so, so hard to keep his vision straight. He’s so—fuck, there’s so much pain, so much—

He blacks out.

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

“Is he dead?”

“I can’t tell if I can’t see ‘em, now can I?”

“God, I wish I were dead,” Trevor moans. He feels like he was stepped on by rocks. He feels like his bones were chewed on by a hellhound and then buried in the dirt for later. He feels like shit.

“That’s a no, then. Stranger, you mind calling off your... dog?”

Trevor cracks open his eyes. Ah. Aurum is standing between him and some of the caravan villagers who look uncomfortable with getting within mouth-distance of the wolfdog. It’s hard to fault them for it, considering the amount of gore clumped in Aurum’s fur. There’s more black than white at this point.  Trevor can’t see the dog’s face, but he assumes it’s covered in the same unearthly stuff.

He coughs. Christ, but his throat burns. “Aurum, be... nice.”

Aurum doesn’t look at him. However, he does move over slightly, allowing an older man with bald head to approach Trevor’s comfy spot on the slushy ground. The man introduces himself as Stefan to Trevor, who introduces himself in turn as... Trevor. Clever, him.

“Don’t know where you get a dog that size, but it’s fierce. Loyal. Wouldn’t let anyone get close enough to see if you were still with us.” The man, Stefan, kneels next to Trevor and looks him in the eye. “We’d be dead or worse if you hadn’t been here. Thank you, son.”

Trevor glances away, chest tight even though now he’s got plenty of air. “Don’t mention it.”

“Where’d you learn to fight like that, anyway?”

“You pick things up, you know,” Trevor says absentmindedly. They must have not heard him earlier, then. What he said to the demon. In his experience that’d be for the better.

Stefan gently moves Trevor’s heavy winter coat aside, peels off the thinner layer under it, and promptly stills.

“What?” Trevor scrapes out. The man doesn’t respond but there are some gasps from the onlooking crowd. Even Aurum turns around, finally gracing Trevor with his half-lidded stare. Trevor is trying not to panic. “What, is it bad?”

Looking down, he steels himself for the worst. Please don’t have guts out, please don’t have guts out...  

Ah, no guts. Blood, yes. Lots of blood, a worrying amount of it, to be exact, covering his abdomen. He hadn’t noticed getting sliced up in the one-on-one match. He can’t feel it either, which is probably not great.

The blood conveniently fails to cover the golden crest on his shirt. Definitely not great.

It doesn’t have to mean anything, change anything. It does anyway. It always does.

“There’s nothing I can do to help you,” Stefan says loudly, gaze hard on the Belmont crest. He stands back up. “The wounds are too grave.”

Trevor clenches his teeth. “Is that so?”

“Yes.” The man hadn’t even fucking looked under Trevor’s shirt to see the damage. Bastard.

“What happened to being dead or worse without me?”

“How do we know you didn’t bring the beasts here yourself?”

Trevor tries to sit up on his elbows and does not react well to the spike of pain that shoots up his torso. So, no sitting. He presses his ruined clothes against the tear in his abdomen, hissing through his teeth at how truly unpleasant it feels. Not much else to do, except hope it’s enough to staunch the bleeding.

He doesn’t bother hiding his scorn as he sees some of the countryfolk behind Stefan nod.

“I saved your fucking lives,” he grits out, old anger rekindling hot in his belly. “The least you can do is take me to Braila.”

Now it’s Stefan’s turn to not look Trevor in the eye. “I’m sorry,” is all he says. He sounds like he might mean it. Worthless. The guilt isn’t enough to convince him to overlook Trevor’s sin of being an excommunicatee, an exile, a Belmont. Trevor supposes he should feel lucky they don’t feel obligated to do their Christian duty by putting him out of his so-called Godless misery.

The other villagers have already begun walking away and the old man joins them. Aurum watches the entire thing in his usual way: silent, impassive, unmoving. Trevor lets out some particularly offensive curses. It won’t help things— he hadn’t thought it would anyway— but it does grant him a pitying glance or two as the caravan departs with their dead and wounded. Likely, they hope to bury their dead as close to the city walls as possible. Or, maybe, they just don’t want to bury them close to Trevor.

“Sure you won’t do me the honor of digging me a grave? I could roll myself in it, make things easy!” Trevor shouts after them before succumbing to another coughing fit. Some of what comes out is tinged red. Fuck.

He’s left behind, along with the dead horses and a few carts too damaged to travel. Oh, and the dog.

“They didn’t want to bring you either, huh,” Trevor mutters grimly. “What, did you get excommunicated too? Did you... what, piss in a church? Bite a priest?” He laughs and it quickly turns to a cough. Aurum had kept a mild amount of distance between them, yet now he pads closer, looking concerned. Good. Trevor will take concerned over... whatever that was earlier.

“Are you still angry with me?” The wolfdog blinks slowly but doesn’t do anything else. He’s still standing out of Trevor’s reach. The black collar is visible at his scruff, though it’s hard to distinguish past all the black goo surrounding it.

“You know who _is_ going to by angry? Sypha.” Trevor clenches his fists at his side and stares up at the sky. He’s trying to ignore the pain throbbing from his chest, his stomach, his head. “She’s going to be so, so angry. I mean righteously pissed off.” He pauses. “Not at the fucking ungrateful villagers. At me.” 

Aurum bumps an ichor-covered snout against his arm and Trevor glances at him out of the side of his vision. “We’re supposed to fight Dracula together. _The_ Dracula; King of the Night, Lord of Darkness, Eternal Pain in my Family’s Ass. Her and the other Speakers— a damn stubborn lot, mind you— have a whole prophecy about it. About me. Like I needed another reason to fight for the people in this shithole.” The wolfdog doesn’t make a sound, just stares at Trevor with a new level of inhuman intensity.

He had meant what he said, back in Gresit. Dying has never frightened him. It’s the purpose behind it, the intent, wasted. Trevor slides his gaze away. “I can’t— If I die here, I can’t well go off and die saving Wallachia.” An awful thought occurs to Trevor; he squeezes his eyes shut and grimaces. Fuck. If she was willing to take on the castle one short, what’s one more missing legend? Sypha will probably storm the place on her own, just to try.

There’s a wuff close and loud in his ear. It’s wet and very, very cold. Turning his head, Trevor levels Aurum with a soft expression. “I— I haven’t known you for very long, but... you— you’re a good boy.”

Giving a small whine, the wolfdog takes it as permission to start licking Trevor’s face. “Eugh, stop—cut it out, ugh.” God, but his dog breath stinks like it’s the mouth to hell. With his face scrunched up, he shoves pathetically at Aurum’s invasive, affectionate head until the licking stops. “Actually, if I die, you _could_ try being less of an asshole to the next guy who saves your life. Twice.”

The wolfdog stamps its front legs, seemingly nervous. With Aurum with him, maybe Trevor can figure out how to get out of this particular mess. The scrape across his belly is very not good, his head feels like a flattened grape, and something tells him he’s broken at least one rib. But he’s seen worse. Survived worse.

“We’re so close,” Trevor says scratchily as he stares off towards the departed caravan. Braila is an hour, no, less than an hour walk away. “Mm’jus’ so... tired...”

Aurum barks. It’s loud and abrupt but it sounds dampened and muffled. There’s another bark, and another, getting farther and farther away. Like a call for help.

Not even an idiot would be caught wandering around after dusk these days. Aside from the rescued villagers there would be no one—and who would stop to help a random stranger and his loud, enormous dog?

Like always, it’s all up to Trevor. Unfortunately, it’s getting harder to keep his eyes open, to stay awake. So hard, actually, that when he later hears approaching footsteps, it takes a massive amount of effort to crack his eyes wide enough to get a look at the source.

From his position on the ground, Trevor takes note of the black, polished footwear that appear to stretch on for ages. Fucking unpractical from the looks of them, no matter how refined or shiny the leather may be. Just like that stupid sword.

“Nice boots,” Trevor croaks.

It’s an inconvenient time to pass out, so of course, that’s what he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this update is late, as I try to post a new chapter in the first week of every month. But! See that chapter count? We’re halfway through! I am also working on a different Castlevania oneshot that will probably be done before this story is finished, so that has taken some of my time. Thank you, dear readers, for your support! I read each and every comment. I'm considering wallpapering my bathroom with them so I can get a motivation boost every time I sit on the toilet. And thank you, Morgan—because of you, all I could think about while writing this chapter was:  
> Trevor: I’m tReVor fucking Belmont  
> Alucard: and I’m boo boo the fool, this is the worst possible mistake, I need to leave, immediately


	5. Chapter 5

When Trevor wakes up, he wakes up slowly.

He blinks away the gritty feeling of sleeping too long, taking note of the soft sheets under his hands and the weak sunlight piercing the half-open window near the bed. Through it, he can see the paneled walls of another house. He’s not outside or on the ground which is... unexpected. He doesn’t remember coming inside a building of any sort. He doesn’t remember how he got here— wherever here is— which is usually very, very bad.

“Trevor.”

He flops his head away from the window and sees a familiar halo of wild hair.

“Sypha?” he croaks. God, his voice sounds awful. There’s a good chance he looks awful, too. Sypha, of course, looks wonderful. Her face is framed by her red-blonde curls and wide-necked cowl, and it’s currently pinched into a mixed expression of worry and joy. 

“Trevor!” She practically throws herself on top of him, abandoning her bedside chair. “You stupid, stupid man. You were almost a _dead_ stupid man, Belmont. Dead! I do not see you for weeks and when I do, you are riddled with holes. You are _terrible_.”

“Uh, thanks.” Trevor feels the tide of guilt creeping in as her blue eyes gloss over with unshed tears. It’s nearly as heavy as the weight on his chest, but not quite.

“Sypha...”

“Yes?”

“You’re crushing my ribs.”

“Oh!” She quickly releases him from the hug. “Sorry. You broke them. Your ribs, I mean. Three of them.”

“Ah, that would explain it.” He feels lightheaded. “How—?”

“I healed you, to some extent.” She begins counting off her fingers. “You had three broken ribs, a concussion, and a horrible wound in your gut. It was... challenging. I have mended you to the best of my ability, but all of the bruises and such remain.” Now that she’s said it, she does seem tired, worn out in the way she had been after fighting demons in Gresit.

Trevor glances down at himself. With the blanket pooling around his waist, the bandages covering his chest and abdomen are completely visible. The unwrapped parts of his body are smattered with bruises, most which are already an ugly purple or yellow. Nice. He looks like a plum that had taken a bad roll down a hill; squishy and tender. It still beats dying.

“Thank you,” he says again. He actually means it this time. 

Sypha leans in close— it feels vaguely threatening. “What happened?”

“I...” Trevor looks up to the ceiling and tries to remember. “...I got in a fight?”

Sypha rolls her eyes. “I know. One does not get an open wound like that from slipping on stairs.”

“It’s fuzzy.” That would be the concussion. As he stares at the ceiling, the pieces start to emerge and fit together in his head. “I was by the road... we were close to Braila. There were demons... and traveling villagers.”

“‘We’?” Sypha repeats, but Trevor continues as the memories rush back with increasing speed.

“We killed them all, but—but Christ, there was one more. It almost—” Trevor lurches forward in bed, eyes suddenly wide. Shit, that hurts. Sypha tries to shove him back down but he waves her off despite the pain.

“Those fucking villagers!” he snarls, “Stupid... fucking villagers. Left me for dead!” Despite his anger, it’s not nearly as important as his next question. He turns to Sypha. “Where’s Aurum?”   

“Who?”

“Aurum. My dog.” At her bewildered expression, Trevor keeps talking, “He’s white, fluffy, huge. As big as me. Kind of looks like a wolf but... anyway, have you seen him? Is he here?”

“Trevor,” Sypha says slowly, “You have a dog?”

“Yeah, it’s a long story.” His heart jumps into his throat. “You... haven’t seen him.”

“No. Just you.” She appears thoughtful. “Well, and the handsome man.”

“What?”

Sypha’s stare increases in intensity tenfold. “What do you remember about getting here?”

Trevor remembers the villagers leaving, him bleeding out on the ground, Aurum searching for help.

He remembers... hair. Long blonde hair, and lots of it. He remembers the wind, cold and biting, whipping in his face as the world blurred past. He remembers the feeling of soft leather, the not-feeling of numbness spiraling outward from his gut. There had been a smell, metallic and sour; the kind of smell that left a sulfuric taste in the back of his mouth after a messy demon cleansing. And under that smell had been... something else. Something familiar, like damp wood, but not. Something... herbal?

“Someone carried me.” Trevor hesitates, brow scrunching up. “A woman?”

“Definitely a man. Although he was very... ah, pretty.” Sypha pouts. “You do not know him?”

“I don’t know any ‘pretty’ men,” Trevor grouses while fighting the irrational flare of jealousy. Sypha picks up on it, because of course she does, and she grins mischievously.

“It is a shame, because I am _very_ interested in seeing him again.” She sighs. “It would be nice to look at someone who knows how to brush his hair.”

“Hey, I know how to brush my hair. I just don’t see the point.” Brushing hair is a complete waste of time, as is bathing—and a lot of other stupid, frivolous things. “I was too busy, I don’t know, dying? Why didn’t _you_ get his name?” 

Sypha frowns. “There was no time.” She goes on to explain how she had arrived in Braila the day before Trevor’s fight with the demons. She had been making night rounds in the lowest part of the city ‘helping the people’ when the stranger had appeared and asked for her by name.

“And he said ‘Are you Sypha?’ and I said, well yes of course, that is my name, yes. And then he just—” Sypha mimics a motion with her arms “—dropped you on the table in front of me. Thunk! And I am thinking, this strange man is very beautiful and, oh look, a Belmont! Why does he look worse than usual? Why is he bleeding? Is he breathing? Is he _dying_?”

Sypha waves her hands around. “When I looked up, he was gone! Vanished. It was strange.” 

Trevor grunts. “So, he didn’t say anything about a dog.”

“...No?” 

“Great. Just great.” Trevor steels himself before sitting up further. He also tries to swing his legs around out of the bed, but it only slides him to be positioned awkwardly sideways.

“What are you doing?” Sypha asks with a note of alarm.

“I need to go find my dog.”

“No no no, you will not, not when you are like _this_.”

Trevor groans; she doesn’t understand. “He’s alone. He could be lost! How is he supposed to find me in the city? What if someone attacks him?”

“Calm down, Belmont.” She fusses over him and manages to get him settled closer to how he had been when he’d woken up. “You need to rest. But since this is so important to you, I will go look for him myself, and...”

He wants to tell Sypha that it won’t work— the wolfdog probably won’t trust anyone else. If she did manage to find him, what would she do? How would she lead Aurum back? He’s not a pick-me-up kind of dog.

He wants to tell her, but he gets distracted.

“...Are you even listening to me?”

Wordlessly, he holds up a finger and slowly points it to the door.

There’s a shadow under the door, blocking out a chunk of the yellow light bleeding in from outside. Trevor hadn’t noticed it at first, that is, until it moved. It wasn’t moving now but every Belmont instinct was screaming inside Trevor’s head: shadow bad, shadow danger. Punch shadow.

Sypha is looking at the doorway, eyebrows tilted in confusion. “That... is a door, Trevor.”

“Something’s behind it,” Trevor says quietly, “Listening to us.”

The shadow shifts away in confirmation and Sypha’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline.

Trevor flops himself over in the saddest attempt of getting out of bed possible. Sypha is quicker, shoving Trevor none-too-gently back into the bed as she stands, a look of determination set to her features. He watches as she sweeps across the room with a hand already forming a sigil. They both hear a distant clatter right before Sypha yanks open the door.

There’s nothing there.

“Sypha, wait!” But she’s already rushing outside, leaving the door wide open behind her. Shit. He needs— he needs to back her up. He can’t be this useless. Grunting with effort, Trevor forces his body to move, forcing it up despite the aching protests his wounds make in response.

Once he’s sat up, he assesses his surroundings. Sypha has set him up in a bed by a wide window and there is a small bedside table with strange bottles on its surface. The room has a simple fireplace, basic furniture, and a tall sloped roof. There’s another door aside from the door leading outside. Trevor would guess a washroom. His clothes are nowhere to be seen, but he sees Vampire Killer coiled up on a table on the other side of the room. Out of reach.

By the time Sypha returns, Trevor’s struggled himself into an upright position with his legs dangling off the bed. She stops in the doorway and stares at Trevor, winded, all while wearing an indecipherable look on her face.

Before he can ask what she may have discovered, Sypha steps aside.

A white, fluffy, huge figure enters the frame.

“Aurum.” The name comes out of Trevor like a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. With a small tail wag, the wolfdog steps around Sypha and pads into the room.

He looks... good. Really good. Okay, so there’s some black spots of demon gore crusted on his pelt, but it’s cleaner than the last time he saw him. The wolfdog stops close to the bed out of Trevor’s reach. His posture is more awkward than Trevor’s ever seen it—filled with a sort of hesitancy that’s a departure from his characteristic stoicism.   

The sight of him is doing something weird to Trevor’s chest. It feels like Sypha stretched too many bandages over his ribs, too tight. Trevor opens his arms. “C’mere buddy.”

The wolfdog takes it as the invitation it is and puts his giant front two paws on the bed. It nearly knocks Trevor over. Trevor buries his hands in the deep, plush fur around Aurum’s neck and pulls him in for a fluffy hug. The dog sniffs loudly in Trevor’s ear, dragging his cold nose across Trevor’s neckline and the side of his face. Sitting up hurts, and Aurum reeks in a mix of dog-stink and old demon blood, but it’s—it’s fine.

“I missed you,” Trevor admits softly into the fur tickling his face. Even muffled, the admission gets him a telling ear flick out of Aurum. The dog spends another eternity sniffing and occasionally licking Trevor, checking him over in his animalistic way, and Trevor lets him because he’s a pathetic, injured man.

“That? That is your... dog?”

Trevor peeks around the scruff fur he’s squished his face into to look at Sypha. She’s still standing in the doorway, watching the scene with an air of suspicion Trevor is unfortunately familiar with.

“Yeah, my _dog_.” Trevor emphasizes the word ‘dog’ like it’s three syllables, not three letters. “A wolfdog-dog. And no—” he raises a pointed finger “—he’s not a wolf.”

“I did not say that he was,” Sypha says slowly. Her eyes narrow ever so slightly at Aurum. “I think— no, not a wolf.”

“Fucking finally. Someone gets it.”

“Trevor, I do not—”

Aurum interrupts her with a booming woof.

“Ah, that’s right. How rude of me.” Trevor waves his hands around Aurum. “Sypha, this is Aurum. Aurum, Sypha.”

Aurum barks again. It’s a short, happy sound. He trots over to Sypha and sits patiently in front of her. Even from his position in bed, Trevor can see the puppy-eye-shit the furry bastard is pulling. Wow.

“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Sypha says with a hint of a smile, temporarily disarmed by doggy charm. She dips to a crouch which ironically makes Aurum a little taller, despite sitting. “Trevor tells me that you traveled with him...” her eyes dart over the black ooze flaked haphazardly in Aurum’s fur “...that you fought at his side.”

The wolfdog blinks and tilts his head.

Sypha looks back at Trevor, then stares at Aurum for another moment. Her stare is intense, searching, as if she’s looking for something. After a strangely long stretch of time, she reaches out and gives the dog’s head a small ruffle. Not only does Aurum let her, but he goes as far as to push his nose into her hand when she tries to take it away.

She giggles and goes back to scratching his head. “Oh, you are a very cute thing. We are going to become good friends, you and I.”

Trevor’s dumbfounded. Aurum doesn’t like people. Aurum doesn’t like _anyone_. Sometimes, he thinks Aurum doesn’t even like _him_. Now he’s sitting in front of Sypha, tail wagging, begging for pets like a common whore. It’s baffling, is what it is.

“Did you name him?” Sypha asks distractedly. She’s moved on to double-handed chin scratches.

“Obviously.” Trevor almost laughs at the thought. “What, you think he told me one himself?”

Sypha gives a noncommittal shrug, which is typical Speaker bullshit. Maybe some of her people can talk to animals; who fucking knows?

She peers into Aurum’s golden eyes in consideration. “It is a good name. It suits him.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Trevor reclines back in the bed and stares at the ceiling. He still thinks Howard was a real winner.

 

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 

Trevor spends three days in hell.

Hell being this house, this bed. They’ve lost so much time already. He can’t lay in bed, wasting away time they don’t have. Every minute he’s trapped here is a minute Dracula has to rip apart more of humanity.

He tells Sypha this. More than once. Each time she shakes her head, slathers him in medicinal balms and curative spells, and essentially tells him to get less fucked up the next time he’s in a fight. Or to shut up.

For all of Sypha’s magical healing, her bedside manner is slim to none.

Aurum stays by him through all of it. He doesn’t try to get up on the bed with Trevor, small as it is, and doesn’t try to jostle into Trevor’s space, fragile as he is. On more than one occasion Trevor wakes to the alarming sensation of his hand being licked from where it dangles off the bed, which, alright, it’s more sweet than gross. And yet, for all that Aurum has protected him from danger thus far, he does very little to protect Trevor from Sypha.

“Stop being such a baby,” she scolds Trevor, “I am almost finished.”

“It stings.” He attempts to pull his leg away from Sypha’s ministrations but she has the thing in a vice grip. Whatever Speaker salve she’s using stings something awful and smells like foul cheese.

“I thought the great Trevor Belmont had put a half dozen stitches in his side without a single tear.”

“Yes, well, I had a tankard of ale in my belly as well.”

She pauses mid-rub. “You gave yourself stitches while drunk?”

“Yeah, how else are you suppose to do it?”

“Ugh.” She shakes her head. It might be Trevor’s imagination, but it feels like Sypha starts rubbing the salve in extra hard. Trevor looks to Aurum for backup only to be met with a judgmental stare that rivals the one on Sypha’s face.

“Shut up. You’re a dog,” Trevor whispers, “You don’t even have hands.”

Aurum snorts disdainfully and uncurls from his watch-post position next to Trevor’s bed. After stretching his long white legs, the wolfdog gives Trevor another scornful eye from over his shoulder and pads out of the room.

Sypha smacks Trevor lightly across his non-injured leg. “Why must you insult him?”

“He can’t understand me, he’s a dog,” Trevor drawls, slouching further into the bed. “Besides, he deserves it. He’s way more of an asshole than he’s letting on.”

Sypha raises a skeptical brow. “I do not believe it. He has been nothing but sweet.”

“It’s all an act. He’s playing you.” For every moment the dog spends at Trevor’s bedside, he also spends that time charming the pants off of Sypha. It was unraveling the careful picture Trevor had formed of the animal. If Sypha asked Aurum to sit? He sat, immediately. Shake? But of course. Roll over? The furry charlatan would be on his back in _seconds_. Trevor tries not to take it personally— he also has a hard time saying no to Sypha.

“Maybe, if you were nicer, he would listen to you more,” Sypha says evenly. Done with the salve, she starts wrapping his leg in clean bandaging.

“Maybe he would listen to me if I had tits,” Trevor mutters, earning him a smack in the shoulder. “Hey hey, I’m wounded!”

“You are about to be more so, Belmont.” The bandaging is being wrapped a bit too tight. Oh no. Trevor is being threatened. Sypha is a threat. Where is Aurum when he needs him?

“Aurum, save me! Sypha’s gone mad with power!”

He hears the sound of heavy paws before the wolfdog appears in the doorway, as if summoned by Trevor’s desperation. 

“Aurum,” Trevor repeats as his smile pulls downward, “You— what the hell— that’s fucking dangerous!”

The wolfdog has the horribly long, extravagant-ass sword between its teeth. Like an oversized stick.

“No. Bad dog, drop it.”

Aurum does not drop it. He tries to get through the door and the sword hits the doorframe with a clunk. It won’t fit.

“Bad, bad dog. That’s not yours.”

The situation has Sypha hiding a smile behind her hand as she watches and offers no help, of course. Trevor has a hard time keeping on the disapproving look he considers his Alpha Face when Aurum tries to get through again with another clunk.

Determined, Aurum considers the doorway without dropping the sword. After a moment the wolfdog turns, angles his head so that the sword pokes through the doorway point-first, and shuffles purposefully into the room.

Sypha claps her hands gleefully together at his triumph. “What a smart boy!”

Trevor groans. “Don’t encourage him. Aurum, drop it.”

Aurum trots up to the bed with a familiar glint in his eyes. It should serve as a warning to Trevor, as the dog immediately dances back when Trevor tries to snatch the sword. His fluffy white tail wags. Taunting him.

“Please, for the love of— ugh, drop it... please.”     

Tail still wagging, Aurum gently places the sword on the ground in front of him. He sits and looks so incredibly, indefensibly smug.

“Good boy or whatever.” His dog is not a good boy. He’s the worst. The absolute worst.   

Sypha picks up the sword, marveling at the intricate hilt. “This sword is beautiful,” she notes with wonder, completely ignoring how senselessly long it is, “I do not recall you using it back in Gresit.”

“That’s because I didn’t have it. Found it after. Some idiot left it in the woods.”

Sypha is giving him an unreadable look. “You found it with the dog.”

“Yeah. Wait, how’d you know?”  

“Intuition,” Sypha says casually, like it isn’t some weird cryptic Speaker nonsense. She’s staring at Aurum who in turn looks bizarrely guilty. There’s something Trevor’s missing here.

Trevor frowns. “Are you suggesting that Aurum ate his owner and all that was left was his sword?”

“Oh, no, that would be silly.” Sypha smiles at Trevor and it is bright with mischief. “Now, roll over so I can get your back.”

“Yes ma’am,” Trevor grumbles. He rolls over.

“Good boy.” There is unmistakable satisfaction in Sypha’s voice.     

He can’t see Sypha, but he can see his dog— who is sitting in front of him with the biggest shit-eating grin.

“Shut up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, it's been a weird month. Last week my fiance found a stray puppy outside his work and I'm the dog lady so, uh, I'm living out this story in a way I didn't sign up for. It's a shame-- she's a girl, so "Howard" is not in the running. However! The next chapter will be longer to make up for how short this one is.
> 
> Also: You fools. You thought I would give you Alucard? So easily? Absolutely not. Let the ruse continue...


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ATTENTION: There is mild sexual content starting in this chapter. The rating has not changed due to the content being mild.
> 
> This is dedicated to all the readers out there with a dog. You understand Trevor’s (and my own) suffering.  
> Sorry for the massive delay. Finishing and putting out the oneshot was part of it, but life is also, as they say, whack. Additionally— this is a much longer chapter than usual, so please, enjoy.

 

 

Each and every day holds new horrors for Trevor.

“A bath? Are you mad?”

“It is just a bath, Trevor. Hot water and soap.” Sypha’s mouth thins into a small frown. “Normal people pay good coin for them.”

“Normal people,” Trevor scoffs, “Do I look ‘normal’ to you?”

“No. You look like you crawled out of a sewer and you smell even worse,” Sypha responds immediately, voice dripping with disgust.

“I’ve done that, remember? You were there.” This is average, non-sewer stink. It’s practically musk.

“You know what I mean.” She clicks her tongue and gestures to the whole of Trevor laid out on the bed. “You should clean yourself, now that you are doing better.”

“Don’t we have more important things to do? Like killing Dracula?”

“What, with your stench?” Her hands go to her hips. “I do not have the time to keep you from getting an infection from your own waste.”

“We’re trying to keep a low profile, and now you want to parade me about a small lump of the city, in the nude?”

Sypha appears confused for a moment before waving a hand dismissively. “Oh, not a public bathhouse. Here. I drew you a bath here.”

Trevor groans. Suffer a bath without the entertainment found at a city bathhouse? “You can’t be serious.” 

“Try me,” Sypha says, entirely serious, “Go, before the water gets cold.”

Shit, she means business. He looks at Aurum who is standing by Sypha with his snooty nose in the air. Oh, this is bad. It’s two on one. He sinks further into the sheets.

Sypha points her finger towards the washroom door. “Get in the tub, Trevor, or I will bring the tub to you and pour it over your enormous fat head.”

Aurum is totally laughing at him, his red tongue out and eyes bright with amusement. Well, Trevor has no problem dragging others down to his level.

“Fine.” Grumbling as he sits up, Trevor glares at the wolfdog. “But he’s getting in too.”

The long red tongue vanishes.

“That... is not a bad idea,” Sypha admits. There are still remnants of their demon fight plastered into Aurum’s dense fur like small, gruesome souvenirs. The scent of ichor is layered on top of general dog-odor in a way that makes Trevor smell pretty good in comparison. And that’s saying something. Clearly, Sypha has been too preoccupied with Trevor to complain about it, and Trevor couldn’t give a shit what his dog smells like. Now, though, now the bath is personal.

Trevor gets to his feet slowly, waving off the arm Sypha offers. “C’mon boy. Scrub a fuckin’ dub.”

Aurum doesn’t move; Trevor hadn’t expected him too, anyway. He stares at the dog, the dog stares back. Sypha stares at them staring at each other.

The Alpha Face isn’t working. “Come. On,” Trevor grits out while tugging Aurum’s black collar. Aurum jerks his head back so fast that it nearly pulls Trevor on top of him.

“If I have to take a bath so do you,” Trevor bitches bitchily as he regains his balance, “You smell like dead shit.”

Aurum’s ears flatten against his skull and he looks at Sypha with a pitiful whine.

“Trevor is right, you do smell kind of gross,” Sypha says, condemning Aurum to his fate. When Trevor walks to the washroom, the wolfdog follows, dragging his tail on the ground.

After closing the door behind them, Trevor is hit by the humidity of the small room. Steam hangs in the air, warm and all-encompassing, and it’s damp but cozy. In the center of the room there’s a large wooden tub alongside a simple washbasin and pile of linens.

Aurum sniffs the air with interest. Okay, yeah, the room smells good, all floral and feminine. It’s intimidating. He shouldn’t have trusted Sypha— as if she would consider soap and water to be enough. Trevor doesn’t want to walk out smelling like a rose, but he’s not foolish enough to go back out there to demand a new batch of less frilly bathwater. Sypha seems capable of drowning a man on dry land.

Trevor peers into the tub and curses. Sure enough, there’s little petals floating among the bubbles, swirling around as steam rises off the water. Trevor stares at it like it’s a cauldron of stew Sypha has threatened to cook him in. He dips a hand in and recoils. That water is hot as all hell; is she actually trying to cook him alive?

Well. Looking at the tub isn’t going to make it go away.

Rolling his shoulders with a sigh, he starts stripping off his clothes. Most of his layers are already folded out in the room, as he’d been in the bare minimum the past few days. The loose shirt comes off first and it’s bloody difficult. His ribs are bruised and tender; his muscles ache near where the hole in his gut used to be. At one point he gets caught up in his shirt. The ensuing battle would be embarrassing if Trevor had any dignity left to lose.

“Finally,” he grumbles, chucking the infuriating thing at the wall. He looks down at himself and assesses the damage. The bruises on his chest and sides are fading to a mottled yellow, far less ugly than they’d been when he’d first woken up. It’s somewhat hard to tell how extensive the harm really is due to the layer of dirt and blood on his skin. The only place on him clear of grime is his stomach where a raised, red starburst of flesh stretches out across his left side, still fresh enough to be pink and angry. It’s bigger than most of his other scars. Most of them. It looks... better than he thought it would. Smaller. If it weren’t for Sypha he’d still be in stitches. If it weren’t for Sypha he’d probably be dead.

“Check it out,” Trevor says to Aurum as he twists to the side. He pokes the scar for good measure, sucks in a breath. Still somewhat raw, that is. “I look fucking _heroic_.”     

Aurum’s yellow eyes are wide in his face which is wrinkled like he swallowed a lemon, all pinched and traumatized. He’s still standing by the door as if Sypha will rescue him at any minute. Haha. Fat chance.

The trousers and pants go next, peeled off with ease compared to his shirt— even if bending over hurts like a bitch. He kicks the clothes off in Aurum’s direction, who is inexplicably startled by the canon of stinky fabric hurtled his way. The trousers nearly smack him in the face.

Fully naked, Trevor points at the tub. “Ladies first.”

The dog won’t look at him or the bath. Great. Perfect time for the animal to pull this bullshit. “If you don’t get in, I’m gonna have to haul your stupid ass in myself. Neither of us want that.”

No, Aurum certainly doesn’t want that. He slinks closer to the door.

“Fine, have it your way,” Trevor declares before moving towards him. Not only does Aurum slink further away but he tries to skirt around Trevor to the other side of the tub. Trevor lurches and the dog repeats the maneuver. And again. And again.

It’s a small bathroom. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. They’re going to keep at this until Trevor scoops him up into the tub like a pathetic baby. Because that’s what he is: a big, fluffy, pathetic baby whose two fears are soap and human nudity.

He can see the moment the inevitability of the situation finally sinks in for Aurum, because the dog stops slinking around the room. Instead, Aurum stares mournfully at the rose water as the damnation it is. The dog gets his front paws on the edge. Pausing, he hangs over the lip with an untoward amount of resignation. Woeful golden eyes turn on Trevor. Here is the well-meaning mutineer and Trevor’s the mean pirate overlord making him walk the plank.

“Ugh, stop being so dramatic. In you go.” Trevor hefts the furry butt up and over and into the water with a splash.

Pushing him in the tub is a blessing. What follows is anything but.

Trevor has never tried to wash an animal like this before and he never will again. This? This is torture. At first, he starts by leaning over the tub, desperately dousing the dense fur while it defies logic by never getting wet. How? How is that possible? Attempting to dunk Aurum’s head into the water goes poorly as well. The piteous dog is as stiff as a board, studiously staring straight ahead into the void as if the bath is something he needs to power through on sheer force of will. Every so often he puts his forelegs up on the edge of the tub, and every time Trevor has to pull him back down. It only takes a few minutes for Trevor’s back to feel like it’s going to crumple in on itself while the white coat in front of him stays firmly half-wet. That—that _cannot_ be normal.

This is some real horseshit. He wanted them to go one at a time so he could maybe, just maybe, enjoy a good soak, but no.

“Stupid... unbelievable...” Muttering, Trevor shoves the dog over enough to give him room to slide in the hot bathwater himself.

Water sloshes over onto the floor as he settles in with more grumbling. The tub is not exactly made for two. Fortunately, he does fit and the water is, admittedly, very nice. It would be relaxing if not for the mass of misery sitting in front of him, begging Trevor to end his sad, sad existence with his big yellow eyes.   

This is both hilarious and terrible. Hilarrible. The dog tries to squirm out of the tub which only results in getting water all over the floor. His escape plan is easily foiled with some expert manhandling—er, doghandling—on Trevor’s part, mostly because Aurum doesn’t have a lot of purchase in the sloshing water or slippery surface of the tub. Turns out his effortless grace does not extend into this specific territory. Eventually, Trevor gets them situated so that they are facing each other, his legs on either side of the animal, effectively trapping his dog as he cups water in his hands and splashes it over Aurum’s massive head.

Aurum looks at him with betrayal and endless suffering. Like this ordeal is infinitely more painful than the time he was beaten half to death in the woods.

Why? Why did he end up with the most melodramatic dog to walk the earth? If the furball could talk, Trevor knows, he just _knows_ he would monologue about the smallest of inconveniences.

“Bonding. This is bonding,” he reminds himself while reaching for the soap. Lather, scrub, repeat. There is—there is a lot of dog to cover. Trevor tries to work the suds into the fur as best as he can even though he has no idea what he’s doing. It’s just like washing hair, right? It’s the same. Just a big man covered in hair.

Trevor uses the same soap to wash his own hair at the same time. It’s called being efficient.

Near the end of it, he takes some of the soap-stiff fur in his hands and forms a tall ridge down Aurum’s head and neck. A laugh bubbles out of him, dragging a responding glower from Aurum.

“You look handsome, boy.” Trevor’s grin is wide in his face. Aurum growls menacingly and it blows a stream of bubbles off Trevor’s hair into the air around them.

The final bathing step involves a lot of creative and copious water-dumping. He tries to wash out the suds by hand and does a fair enough job of it. However, the first cooperative effort of the bath is made when Aurum cuts the ordeal short by dunking himself in the murky water to rinse out the rest of the soap. God only knows why he couldn’t do that at the beginning. No, he had to wait ‘til the end.

“You’re free!” Trevor proclaims with a shooing gesture. Aurum stands, hesitates, and for a moment Trevor thinks he’s going to leap out of the tub.

After a prolonged pause, the wolfdog shakes his entire body like a wrung wash rag right in front of him.

Hands are inadequate shields against the torrent that falls upon Trevor. It’s the same as standing in the first band of a storm except the storm smells like wet dog. Ugh. Aurum gets out of the tub before Trevor is done sputtering, producing another full body shake once all of his paws are back on the ground. Padding over to the linen pile, Aurum begins dragging one out and un-stacks the whole stack in the process.

Rolling his eyes away from the mess, Trevor stretches out into a more comfortable position within the tub. He finishes washing himself lazily, then settles in. He sits. And sits. He sits long enough that he actually begins to relax. Finally. He now has some space to himself, and he intends to squeeze in a little enjoyment. He intends to squeeze in a little enjoyment, literally.

It’s been a long time. Unbearably long. He’s been trapped out in the cold, crashing in any warm corner he could find, then smacked about by a giant oozy demon. The past few days he’s been under Sypha’s care and watchful eye and hey, there’s some things that those big blue eyes don’t need to see. But he’s human, just human. Full of blasphemy and a week’s worth of pent-up frustration.   

Pushing a breath out through his nose, Trevor wraps a hand around himself and closes his eyes. Ruffles around in his mind for an image, maybe a couple of images, logs for the fire. He thinks about bright hair and long legs and soft skin. The water’s still warm, still slowly draining the tension from his body. He shifts his legs open a little wider, slips himself lower so the water comes up higher on his chest.  The soap lather is slippery even in the water and it makes his hand glide over his dick. Fuck, but it’s good, so good. He tightens his grip and grinds the back of his skull against the tub’s hard edge with a groan.

It’s not often a man gets a bath to himself. No bathhouse, no socialites or gossips. Just a man and his hand and his dog.

Uh.

Trevor cracks an eye open and peers to the side. Tries not to freak the fuck out when he’s faced with the luminous amber eyes staring back at him. The instant Trevor looks at him the dog glances away, caught in the act.

It’s just a dog. A dog. It’s totally fine, it’s not weird—

“Urghh.” Try telling that to his dick. Why can’t he have anything nice? You save a creature’s life and then you can’t rub one out without thinking about the responsibility.

“Go away.” Aurum doesn’t move. “Stop—stop looking.” That just gets the dog to look directly at him. Fuck.  

“You’re the worst,” he grumbles as he sinks further into the water, “A total pervert.” So much for that. God forbid he actually enjoy a bath even once.

 

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 

Aurum is a fluffy, fluffy boy.

Sypha says as much, only with far more cooing and charm than Trevor thinks is warranted.

“I’m also clean,” Trevor points out after clearing his throat. Sypha looks up from where she has her hands buried in the wolfdog’s coat, which is blown out to such a massive degree that it nearly engulfs her. She’s up to her elbows in white fur and clearly loving every minute of it.

Sypha gives him a once over, top to bottom. ‘Impressed’ is not a word Trevor would use. ‘Begrudging satisfaction’ is closer to the mark.

“This is true,” she answers slowly, without the cooing or charm. She goes back to running her delicate fingers through Aurum’s scruff and the bastard gives Trevor his smuggest look yet. Evil, suck-up bastard.  

When Trevor grumbles and stomps over to the fireplace, Sypha offers him a sweet smile that borders on condescending. “Do you need me to comb through your hair too, Trevor?”

“No.” Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t need to—to stoop to Aurum’s level. He goes on to mutter something about having his own hands and, besides, who bothers combing their hair? Shaking it out in front of the fire, Trevor contemplates if he has the strength to wrangle Aurum into a haircut. It would be good for all of them to shave a mass of that fluff right off. Well. It would be good for Trevor.   

Once Trevor stretches himself out next to the fire, it doesn’t take long for him to feel the weight of the afternoon settle in. He’s spent days in bed, resting and healing, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that something as easy as a bath has him feeling the way he does after a long spar. The hot steam from the water only adds to the lull. Heat from the bath, heat from the fire. He doesn’t realize how close to sleep he is until there is a warm hand at his shoulder.

“Hm?” He peers up at Sypha blearily.

She angles her head back towards the bed he’d spent the last few days. “I changed out the bedding. You will not thank yourself tomorrow if you sleep on the ground.” She speaks quietly, mouth quirking in the corner. That’s what clues Trevor in to the huge mountain of fur next to him.

Trevor wants to say something about how the ground is fine. He sleeps on the ground all the time. But. “Where’re you sleeping?”

“Upstairs.”

It takes some squinting and searching for him to find the rungs of a crooked ladder set against a far wall. He directs his squinting eyes at Sypha. “How long has that been there?”

“Where did you think I was sleeping? Outside?” Alright, fair enough.

Wincing at the old-man crack that comes out of his spine when he stands, Trevor lumbers over to the bed. Aurum also comes over to the bed.

“No,” Trevor starts, frowning as the dog looks at the bed and then at him. “No, nope.”

Aurum lets out a thin whine.

“Sypha,” Trevor calls out. He reconsiders his stance on begging. “Sypha, would you—”

“Absolutely not,” Sypha says. She’s already halfway up the shitty ladder, but not so high that Trevor can’t see her smiling. She shrugs, finishes climbing, and vanishes into the dark loft. Not a moment later her voice floats down to him, “He is _your_ dog.”

His dog continues to stare at him with his sleepy eyes, as if that’s going to get Trevor to change his mind. It won’t.

Trevor grumbles and surveys the room. There’s a rug by the fire, an extra blanket over a chair. It’ll do.

 _“ _Voilà__ _,”_ he proclaims a few minutes later to Aurum. One hand gestures to the pile of rug and blankets he’s created, then moves to the bed next to it, “Bed for dog. Bed for people.”

Aurum stares disdainfully at the makeshift dog bed and puts his forelegs up on the people bed.

“No. Bad dog.” Trevor puts the front paws back on the ground himself, repeats the motion. “Your bed. My bed.”

Aurum sits close to, but not quite on, his floor bed. The stubborn animal does, however, let Trevor shove him around until he’s basically on it.

“Good. Down.” Mmm, that’s still a sit, not a down. Trevor is far too tired to care. He crawls into bed and snuffs out the candle.

“Goodnight,” he puts out into the dark, into the silence.

He gives it ten minutes.

Not even five minutes later there’s a shifting of his pallet, hot breath in his hair. Aurum has his head resting on the bed and is gazing at him with his bright eyes.

“No,” Trevor grunts. He pushes the big head off, only for it to return within seconds.

“Aurum.” Even in the dark he can see the white tail give a half-wag. “Aurum, no.”

The big eyes blink and stare at Trevor a moment longer. Then the heavy weight of Aurum’s head disappears from the bed.

Trevor loosens a breath, sends out a silent blessing to whomever will listen.

He’s nearly asleep when Aurum jumps on the bed.

Groaning, Trevor shoves uselessly at the furry demon invading his space. “Boy, you’re killing me. What, you—you think you’re a person? Dog, dog bed. What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?”

All of it, apparently, since the dog refuses to be shoved off the bed and only settles in further. Wriggles in closer. Just as the bath was made for one man, so is the bed. Trevor is already regretting the amount of hair that’s going to be in his mouth when he wakes up after this.

But the thing is, Aurum’s coat is... exceptionally fluffy. Unbelievably soft. Softer than it was on the road.   

It’s enjoyable on the hands, okay? He admits it.

“I suppose it’s fine, this one time,” Trevor allows. The fluff has won him over. He’s just glad Sypha isn’t around to rub his face in the evidence of her being right on yet another thing.

His hands sink into the fur and are completely engulfed. There’s no end to it. He pushes deeper until he reaches what he can only assume is skin. It all feels the same, soft and warm and dense. Cracking an eye open, he gives an experimental scratch.

Aurum rumbles, rolls over to give him more access. It pulls a quiet huff of amusement out of Trevor. That’s right, idiot, Sypha’s not the only one with hands for belly scratches. As he rubs lazy pets into the furry, furry tummy, Trevor comes across a bump. Not a bump, really, but a ridge. He had come upon it before, in the bath, but hadn’t thought much of it.

Now though, now it appears under his fingers, buried deep in Aurum’s fur, and the raised flesh stretches endlessly in each direction. Trevor recognizes the feel of it across the callouses of his hands. He has plenty of his own. But none like this.

The scar, it’s... enormous.

He traces it and feels something ugly open up inside of him as the scar goes and goes and goes. The line of tissue starts at the wolfdog’s shoulder joint and crosses to the other hip, slices across his belly, unnaturally hard in comparison to the softness surrounding it.

He knows what leave scars like this one. It’s the kind of strike meant to kill, the gutting of a fish end to end, bow to stern. It makes the puckered starburst on his own side look like a lucky potshot. It’s not from whatever attacked Aurum in the woods. It’s older.

A sinkhole stretches dark and wide in Trevor’s stomach, the same gut feeling from when he had come across the animal in the woods. Sticky as tar, bitter as bark. It’s a trench he can never seem to shovel enough of anything in to keep full.

He traces the scar until he falls asleep and dreams of putting a sword in the monster that made it. 

 

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 

When Trevor wakes up in the morning, he’s half-tangled in blankets out on the ground and Aurum’s sprawled on the bed like a king.

And yet, his mouth is still miraculously full of dog hair.

“How nice of you to give him your bed, Trevor,” Sypha crows from the loft, and laughs when Trevor is too busy spitting out fur to defend himself. Aurum flops over and hangs his stupid head off the edge of the bed to mock him cheekily with his half-lidded eyes.

Whatever. It’s a one-time thing.

 

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 

“This game of yours sounds boorish,” Sypha says skeptically, her small hands wrapped around a mug brimming with alcohol.

“Yes but it’s simple.” Trevor wants something simple. He’s not asking for much.

“You go first, then.”

“Alright, let me think.” He takes a drag from his wooden cup, which had been conspicuously less full than the one given to Sypha. The bartender’s generosity speaks far louder than the furtive glances he keeps sending her way. Not that she’s noticed, sneaking her own furtive glances under the table to Aurum’s hulking form. How amusing it is, to think of all of the jealousy inspired by a dog.

Trevor swivels around to sweep their surroundings for choices. The pub is half-full of city folk, most of whom are gossiping about whatever horde attack is most recent. The lamplights are warm and low, the fire warmer. The owner had tried to kick Aurum out of the place within seconds of their arrival, but had been thwarted only by the smooth flutter of Sypha’s big blue eyes. “He is my protection,” she had said, her voice high and feminine. “Please,” she had said, with a gentle touch on the man’s arm. He had folded like a house of cards in the wind. Just another element Sypha wields with deadly precision. 

“How about our kind, gentleman pub owner... and the bartender—” Trevor spots a man with an enormous beard and fat pouch of coin. He jerks his thumb in his direction, “—and that guy.”

Sypha frowns, cranes her neck to see the patron he’s mentioned. “The one with the bald head or the solider?”

“No, the one with the funny hat.”

“Ah, I see.” Sypha purses her lips. Taps the wood grain of the table. Her face twists and she pouts, “Must I kill one?”

“That’s the rules. You can start with something else.”

“I would marry the nice pub owner man,” Sypha answers, much quicker than Trevor was expecting.

“Okay,” Trevor says slowly after waiting for an explanation and getting none. “....because?”

“He owns property, and a business,” she explains like Trevor is particularly slow. “Oh, and we would have a summer wedding, and have cider, and I would put many, many flowers in my hair. My people would have to be there, of course, not to mention the many traditions we would need to celebrate—”

“You don’t have to describe the—” Trevor pauses as Sypha blinks owlishly at him, “—nevermind. And then?”

“Wait, do I not sleep with the one I marry?”

“I mean, I guess. You can? But you have to pick someone different.” When Sypha opens her mouth to argue he groans. “It’s a game, Sypha.”

“Well. Then I bed... the bartender.” She puts her head on her propped-up hand. “He would serve me another very full drink; except I would _insist_ that we drink it together. And then—"  

“You don’t have to describe it,” Trevor repeats firmly, swallowing around another draft. He can’t tell if she’s fucking with him at this point. “So you kill the poor man over there? But what of his impressive and stately hat?”

“I do not like it at all,” she says imperiously.

“So you kill a man because you don’t like his hat?”

She shrugs and tries to hide her grin from showing, badly. “I have killed men for less.”

Has she? Before he can ask, she claps her hands together. “I answered your riddle, yes? How did I do?”

“You did great,” Trevor says drily, “But I told you, it’s not a game you win.”     

She gives him a dirty look that explains to Trevor that yes, it is that type of game and yes, she plans on winning it. He casts his eyes to the ceiling and holds back a smile. “Your turn.”

“Does it need to be people we can see?”

“You mean, only people around us?” Trevor flaps his hand dismissively. “No, of course not. It can be anyone, anything. That’s the fun of it.”

Sypha hums and takes her time to think. Trevor takes his time to finish his mug and gives Aurum a few dotting ear-scratches under the table while he waits. By the time she’s ready, Trevor’s on to the next drink.

“I have one,” announces Sypha with a devilish smile. She counts off a finger, “That bishop, the one in Gresit—”

“He’s probably already dead—”

“Two goats—”

“What—Two? Sypha—”

“And Dracula.” Sypha ticks off a third finger before settling back in her chair. She takes a small sip out of her cup and watches him with deceptively guileless eyes. “Choose wisely, Trevor.”

He frowns and twirls a hand around. “It’s easy enough. I—hm, no, that’s not it—” Taking a long pull from his mug, Trevor mulls it over with a scrunched-up face. “The Bishop of Gresit— I mean, he isn’t dead yet, is he? Never saw that sanctimonious fuck after the whole thing. So... so, kill him. And even if he is dead, I’d kill him again. The shit—I mean the absolute shit he said to me was insane, Sypha, insane. Beyond insane. Then fuck the goats, right, because when in Rome, right—”

“You would rather— a _goat_ than the bishop?!” Sypha gasps with a small hiccup. The mead she’s been nursing has driven a flush into her cheeks.

“No!” Trevor protests in mock offence, “Two goats. Two. I’d rather make love to not one, but _two_ goats than his wrinkly, deluded, self-righteous ass.”

Sypha’s face is trapped between disgust and delight. “‘Make love’? Trevor, Trevor please no—"

“—and two, by the way, come on Sypha, two? That’s fucked up. And—and that leaves the obvious. Marry Dracula.”

Sypha hits both of her palms against the table with a snort, looking close to tears. “You— obvious— marry Dracula?”

“Yeah. He had a wife! A human wife! That means—it means something, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?”

Trevor nods. “He’s obviously into humans in more than a midday snack way. Good chances. Also,” he raises his index finger, “I’m told he’s _very_ handsome.”

There is a long groan from under the table.

Sypha’s on the edge of a breakdown. “What? We— we are on our way to kill him. The ‘obvious’ answer was to kill him, Trevor.”

“Imagine it,” he starts, drawing his hands through the air while staring off in the distance, “We arrive at his castle, his big spooky castle, and he flaps down the stairs, all hissy and broody— I have yet to meet a non-hissy, non-broody vampire— and the Lord of Darkness is prepared for our battlements, and, and—and we seduce him.”

That does it. Sypha breaks. She laughs and laughs, tears rolling down her face. “I cannot, Trevor, please—” 

“Yes, I’ve cracked it. This— this is why we were chosen, Sypha. It never said how we were to defeat him. We could defeat him—” and here he waggles an eyebrow “—with bewitching wiles.”

“What?!” Sypha gasps, nudging Trevor in the side. “You do not have any of those.”

“Those what?”

“Bewitching wiles,” Sypha repeats. She struggles into a solemn expression for all of a moment. “I would have to carry the whole mission _and_ keep you from making an ass of yourself.”  

“Hey,” Trevor doesn’t even have it in him to be offended. “You can be wily enough for the both of us.”

Smugness twitches at Sypha’s mouth. “Very well. My turn again.”

“You just went,” Trevor complains. He’s trying to frown but his mouth keeps curling into a grin.

“Yes, well, I have another one.”

“Oh alright.”

He should have known exactly what he was getting into, should have known before Sypha points at herself and lists, “Me, the handsome stranger, Aurum.”

She was right. There is a way to lose at this game. “This is stupid,” he grumbles with a glance away from the table. Anywhere away from Sypha. The barmaid is a few tables over, adjusting her cotton shirt so that even more of her bosom spills out over the edge.

“How is it stupid?”

Trevor tries to think past the fog of the drink and his eyes get stuck on the excessive amount of cleavage headed towards their table. The warm weight of Aurum’s form shifts against his boots. “Well. Aurum’s a dog.”

“Two goats, Trevor.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Trevor—”  

A massive tankard of ale slams on the table in front of an even more massive pair of breasts. They’re at eye level. It’s not staring if they’re blocking everything else in sight.

“Hey there ladies—lady,” Trevor corrects himself, mustering the strength to look at her face. It’s alright as far as faces go, brown eyes and round cheeks and a good number of teeth. It’ll do.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” the barmaid says with an unsubtle flutter of her lashes.

“That’s because I haven’t been here before,” Trevor says with the air of a guest visiting a newly furnished manor and not a shit bar. He can feel Sypha staring at him. He takes the kick she gives him under the table without flinching. “My _sister_ and I are just passing through.”

“A shame.” The barmaid looks Trevor up and down without a single glance at the other patron at the table. “We could use more... strong men like you around here, times being as they are.”

“I don’t know about... strong.” Trevor goes ahead and flexes his arm as he reaches for the tankard. The barmaid’s eyes follow the motion with interest.

Sypha makes a disgusted noise. “Trevor, please.”

“Trevor?” A flirty smile grows on the barmaid’s face. “That’s a fine name. I had a cousin named Trevor.” She leans across the table, and wow, that blouse is not securing anything. “Wasn’t nearly as fine.”

Trevor opens his mouth before his brain has fully caught up. Before he can speak, a growl swells into the space between the two of them.

The barmaid quickly straightens away from the table even as Trevor says, “Oh, that’s my dog. Don’t mind him, he’s friendly.”

With her eyes glued to the dark underside of the table, the barmaid laughs nervously. “I didn’t think we allowed dogs in here.”

“Well, Aurum here is _really friendly_ ,” Trevor annunciates through gritted teeth. He nudges Aurum under the table. “He’s always _nice_ to young ladies like yourself.”

Aurum is not nice to young ladies. Aurum is not nice to anyone. Aurum proves this by growling louder.

“He gets nervous around strangers. You know.”

The barmaid nods like she doesn’t know at all but wishes she does. After a moment, she boldly crouches down and offers a hand. “Hey there, big fella. Aren’t you... big, for a fella.”

The dog does not move to sniff the hand. Trevor imagines that he’s staring at the offered hand like a peace treaty made of meat. This is confirmed when he peeks under the table to see the nasty glare Aurum is giving the barmaid, bared teeth and all. Trevor has a sudden vision of Aurum biting her hand clean off.

Panicking, he stands up from his chair, startling the two other humans and dog alike. Dizziness hits him like a pound of bricks. “I, uh.” Shit. “I—Wouldn’t you know it, my dog has to piss. Outside. Right now.” He drags Aurum to the door. It’s not exactly dragging. It’s more like Aurum is accompanying him out but making it difficult.

Once outside, Trevor wheels on Aurum. “Why—what is wrong with you? Could you get your head out of your ass for just—for fifteen minutes?”

Aurum glares at him, golden eyes narrowed and pissy like he even has something to be pissy about. Fucking—as if Trevor doesn’t have plans. Big plans. Big, busty plans.  

“I have a date with that barmaid once I figure out what her name is.”

Aurum snorts obnoxiously.

“What? Hey, I was doing great back there. If you hadn’t—If your attitude wasn’t a fucking wasteland of towering horseshit, I would be knee-deep in—”

Aurum gets a mouthful of Trevor’s trousers and tugs. Between the surprise of it and the amount that Trevor has had to drink, it succeeds in pulling him to the ground.

“You piece of shit dog,” Trevor spits, “You wanna go? Let’s go.” As he says it, Aurum pushes him over with a shoulder check. Trevor blindly gets his fist in the dog’s fur and yanks. They end up rolling around, scrambling in the dirt, and there is a lot of kicking and nipping involved.

“What is going on here?”

The both of them pause. Aurum is half on top of him while Trevor has a foot planted square against the dog’s chest. Blinking, Trevor looks up at Sypha upside-down.

“What are you doing?” she hisses. Sypha is furious. With her quiet voice it’s not so obvious, but Trevor has spent a lot of time making her angry. It’s all in the tense tone and the tight fists at her side.

“He started it.” He knows how pathetic it sounds once he says it. The chances of Sypha taking his side are slim.

To his surprise, Sypha shakes her head and glares at Aurum. “I expect this from him. But you?”

Aurum appears frozen. Trapped between Sypha’s disappointment and Trevor’s boots, he wilts. After he steps off Trevor, he trudges over to Sypha with his tail low to the ground.  

“Good news,” Sypha says once Trevor has gotten himself into a sitting position, “We have been hereby banned from this establishment.”

“Why? By who?”

“By me. That was so horrific, I am going to have nightmares. Nightmares, Belmont. We can never be seen here again.”

“Now who’s being dramatic,” Trevor mutters. Luckily for him, Sypha merely narrows her eyes instead of ripping his head off. She huffs and starts walking away.

“Hey.” Neither Sypha nor Aurum stop. “Hey, you’re not going to help me up?”

Trevor scrambles to his feet and follows after them. Once he’s caught up, he walks sullenly on one side of Sypha while Aurum walks on the other. He won’t look at the dog, and the dog seems content to do the same. They trek the entire walk back to their appropriated house in absolute silence.

Sypha stops in front of the door. All of a sudden, the tenseness leaves her shoulders. She seems... defeated, almost.

“Sypha, look—”

“I am tired.” She sounds it. Guilt sprouts at his heels.

“I’m sorry, alright.” He isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for, just that he’s made her upset. He sees Aurum nudge her side with a small whine.

“Hmm. I accept your apologies.” She glances at Trevor with just a hint of a smile. “Now, you should apologize to each other.”

What? “I’m not apologizing to a dog,” he grumbles. Aurum huffs as if the same indignity applies to him.

Sypha merely waves her hands in the air, exasperated. “Suit yourselves. I for one will be sleeping peacefully. Upstairs.”

Leaving the two of them alone, together. Trevor glares at Aurum as Sypha enters the house ahead of them. Leaning in, Trevor warns, “You’re _not_ sleeping in my damn bed tonight.”  

He means it this time.

An hour later, with Aurum smushed up against his side, Trevor is forced to wonder.

What, exactly, is fucking wrong with him?

 

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

 

When he wakes up in the morning, Trevor finds himself on the floor once again.

This morning, however, reveals no dog on the bed.

In fact, Aurum is nowhere to be seen.  

Trevor does a quick search around the house. It’s a small house. Aurum is a big dog. He’s about to start climbing up the slapshift ladder when Sypha starts coming down it.

Sypha peers down at him with a questioning look.

Trevor tries to look casual, decides to lean against the wooden wall. “Have you seen Aurum?”

“Good morning to you too, Trevor.” She finishes climbing down the ladder before glancing around. “And no, I have not seen him. Perhaps he went outside.”

“Perhaps,” Trevor admits distractedly. She’s right, of course. Doors likely mean shit to Aurum. He’s a weird dog—he can probably open them with his big nose or some sort of nonsense.

As soon as his boots are on, Trevor makes for the door.

“Where are you going?” Sypha catches his hand as he passes her at the table. “I thought we were going to the market today to get supplies. Together.” Sure enough, there’s a list sitting out on the table in front of her. She’s clearly been adding to it while he’s been getting dressed.

“I’m going to look for Aurum first. He’s probably not far.” The dog can’t understand that they have plans to go shopping at the market. At least, that’s the rationale Trevor uses when he goes outside and starts calling his name.

Trevor searches the area surrounding the house. There are tracks that lead from the house towards the outskirts of the city, but the prints are soon obliterated by the foot traffic of city folk. He keeps walking, calling out the dog’s name and ignores any strange looks he gets for doing so.

It takes a good half an hour before the panic creeps in, starts pushing at his ribs.

It’s fine. It’s fine. They had a fight, if you can even call it that. Trevor had been drunk, he had—he had tried to kick him. Maybe he had kicked him. Sure, the beast had been biting holes in his clothes as they wrestled on the ground but... he had kicked at him. Trevor can’t remember it clearly.

It’s not fine, not really. Regardless, Trevor pushes the feeling down and keeps looking.

By the time Trevor circles back to the house, an hour has passed. Maybe more. It’s possible, he realizes, that the dog may have returned back to the familiar ground without passing Trevor. With that in mind, Trevor smothers the anxiety prickling at him and slams open the door.

He’s expecting the house to be empty, what with Sypha at the market without him. He’s not expecting her to be back so soon.

And she’s not alone.

“Oh good, Trevor, you’re back,” Sypha greets him cheerfully from her seat at the table, “Look who I found while out at the market. Allow me to introduce you—"

“There’s no need for such formalities.” The stranger’s voice is smooth and light, like polished steel, and there is a noticeable tilt to it that smacks of aristocracy. “We’ve met before.”

Trevor stands in the doorway with his grip tight on the doorknob. The voice is new. Everything else is... familiar, somehow. It’s eerie in a way he can’t quite put his finger on. His gaze drops under the table. He sees black, polished leather boots that stretch on for days.

Ah, that explains it. His presumed mysterious rescuer has specific tastes. Specifically bad. Trevor glances at Sypha and catches her encouraging nod.

“I suppose so,” he says slowly, looking back to the stranger with a measured stare. “Sorry, didn’t catch your name the first time.”

“My apologies.” The man smiles politely, lips closed, and Trevor thinks, oh shit. Shit, Sypha is right yet again. He is very pretty.

“The name is Alucard. A pleasure.”


End file.
